HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Old Southern Hotel Building

Llano, Llano County, Texas

Marker Inscription

J.W. Owen had this hotel building constructed about 1880. Stonemasons J.K. Finlay and John Goodman built the original two-story structure, which was a stagecoach stop. The third floor was added during the ownership of Col. W.A.H. Miller, who bought it in 1883. An annex was later added to the west side of the building, and an addition on the north served as dining hall and kitchen. There, family-style meals were served until the business, then called the Colonial Inn, closed in the 1950s. The additions were removed in 1977. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

J. W. Owen had this stone hotel built around 1880 as a stagecoach stop, the work of local stonemasons including the noted builder J. K. Finlay. A third floor was added after 1883, along with an annex and a dining hall where family-style meals were served for decades. Known in its final years as the Colonial Inn, the business closed in the 1950s.

Why it matters

A stone hotel and stagecoach stop like this one anchored the transportation and commerce networks that knit together the isolated towns of the nineteenth-century Texas frontier.

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Related people

  • · J. W. Owen
  • · J. K. Finlay

Themes & tags

TransportationFrontier HistoryLandmark

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