You are here

Hotel Blessing

-A A +A
1907. 10th St. at Ave. B

The Hotel Blessing was constructed by J. E. Pierce and A. B. Pierce in connection with their development of the Blessing townsite. The two-story, twenty-five-room hotel is of wood-frame construction, which makes its California Mission–shaped central parapet— framed by a pair of three-story, hipped-roof towers and prefaced by a front veranda with terrace deck—all the more incongruously charming. The hotel is tentatively attributed to Jules Leffland. Abel B. Pierce Jr. gave the hotel to the Blessing Historical Foundation in 1977. The foundation restored the hotel in 1978 and operates it as a hotel and regionally noted restaurant.

Across 10th Street from the hotel is the one-story Blessing State Bank Building of 1907, also tentatively attributed to Leffland (it does have a columned corner entrance). The Blessing Rice Warehouse of 1909 at Railroad Avenue and the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico tracks was a Pierce family enterprise. Predating the founding of Blessing by thirty years is the Masonic Hall at 11th Street and Avenue B. Built in 1875 at the Deming's Bridge settlement on the east bank of the Trespalacios River, the lodge building was moved to Blessing after its founding. The two-story clapboard building has a central entrance, consisting of double doors beneath a transom, located in the narrower gabled end. Like the Cedar Bayou Masonic Lodge in Bay-town ( AT21), Blessing's Masonic Lodge represents the survival of a nineteenth-century building type once common in Texas coastal towns but now quite rare.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,