Site of St. James Hotel
Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Joseph Alexander Kemp (1861-1930), a Wichita Falls merchant, and Morris Lasker (1840-1916), a native of Prussia who later served as state senator from Galveston, formed a partnership in 1892 for the construction of a hotel at this site. Built by Myles O'Reilly, the three-story St. James Hotel was completed one year later and became the center of area social events. Guests were attracted by the good food and by the music of a hotel orchestra. Business began to decline as new hotels opened in the area and in 1929 the building was demolished. (1980)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the boom years after the railroad reached North Texas, local merchant Joseph A. Kemp and Galveston businessman Morris Lasker went into partnership in 1892 to raise a first-class hotel on this spot. Completed the next year, the three-story St. James became Wichita Falls' social heart, drawing guests with fine food and the strains of its own house orchestra. As newer hotels rose around it, the St. James slipped into decline and was torn down in 1929.
Why it matters
The hotel's rise and fall traces the arc of a young railroad town's Gilded Age ambitions, when a grand lodging house doubled as a community's parlor and civic stage.
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Related people
- · Joseph Alexander Kemp
- · Morris Lasker
- · Myles O'Reilly
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
J. A. Kemp Wholesale Grocery Building
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Raised in 1892, this sturdy sandstone-and-brick building housed Joseph Kemp's wholesale grocery for thirty-five years, expanding with a two-story addition by 1901. During the 1930s oil boom it turned to petroleum supply under the Industrial Supply Company, whose skilled masonry, arched windows, and 18,750 square feet still testify to Wichita Falls' commercial rise.
Henry C. Luecke Pioneer, Blacksmith and Inventor
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Missouri-born Henry C. Luecke reached Texas around 1890 and opened a blacksmith shop at this Wichita Falls corner in 1903. There he designed and built the Wichita Gang Plow, patented in 1905, a multi-furrow implement whose three control levers gave farmers unusual maneuverability. It sold widely across the region until the steam tractor rendered such horse-drawn plows obsolete.
The Zale Legacy
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Russian Jewish immigrant Morris Bernard Zalefsky learned the jewelry trade from his uncle in Wichita Falls, and after Klan activity drove him from a store in Graham he returned in 1924, Americanized his name to Zale, and opened his own shop on this spot. His innovations — easy credit, aggressive advertising, employee stock options — built the Zale Jewelry Company into a chain that survived the Depression and, after moving to Dallas in 1946, grew into the world's largest retail jeweler.
O'Donohoe, John F.
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John F. O'Donohoe arrived in Wichita Falls in 1909 as a scout for the Guffey Petroleum Company — later Gulf Oil — and, working without a surveyor, staked the firm's first Clay County lease in what became the Petrolia Oilfield. Over the following decades the wildcatter organized a string of petroleum companies, managed a Chamber of Commerce development firm, and married into the family of oilman Frank Kell. Active in banking and civic life, he chaired the board of what is now Midwestern State University.