Crazy Water Hotel Annex Discovered!

 

Until recently, common knowledge has held that there were three buildings associated with the first Crazy Well Water Hotel property. These buildings were:

• the pavilion built in 1909 
• a single hotel unit built in 1912 and 
• a second hotel unit built in 1914 and attached to the first, sharing lobby between them

This is what has been believed and held to be true for decades. However, there are two corrections that need to be made to this record.

One is the small matter of an incorrect date on the first hotel building.

Both the Portal to Texas History and A F Weaver’s book “Time Was in Mineral Wells” have the construction date for the first hotel unit as 1912, with the second unit being “constructed two years later in 1914 and joined to the first building.”  (The Portal to Texas History likely received their dates from Weaver.)  

In her book, “A History of Mineral Wells, Texas”, however, Winnie Beatrice McAnelly Fiedler declares “In 1915 the Crazy Water Well Company built the first unit of the old Crazy Water Hotel and in 1918 built the second unit or annex.”

These contradictions led me to digging in the newspaper archives once again and carefully studying images of the early hotels.

I discovered that the Crazy Water Hotel was completed and opened in August 1913. The hotel consisted of two co-joined buildings sharing a lobby. You can see the article below.

The second item that needs to be corrected is the number of buildings associated with the Crazy Well Water Hotel properties.   There were not three buildings, but FOUR!  

• the pavilion built in 1909 
• the Crazy Hotel with two co-joined units built in 1913 (not one unit built in 1912 and the other in 1914/1915, but instead, built in the same year) and... 
• an annex built BEHIND the Crazy Hotel in 1918!

I unearthed this stunning discovery on December 5^th of 2021, and in early 2022, confirmed that the two co-joined units were both completed in 1913. The new information was so unexpected that I was completely floored. I thought I must be wrong. Surely if this were true, it would have been mentioned somewhere; The Portal to Texas History, perhaps? Weaver or Fiedler’s books? But no!

I found no information in any of these sources.  However, my search in the newspaper archives and through existing photographs are indisputable.  The evidence is below.

Palo Pinto County Star, 31 August 1917                                             

An article in the National Hotel Reporter (23 May 1918) described the annex as having 52 rooms.  The hotel manager, Mr. W O Brinker's wife planned all of the furnishings.  

The west room of the annex are in French gray and rose; the east rooms in cream color and ivory. The upholstering and draperies are in beautiful cretonnes; the chairs, roomy and comfortable, are of fibre, painted in the color of the room, the remainder of the furniture being in mahogany.

The furniture and hangings were purchased through the Ellison Furniture Company of Ft Worth; the linens from Sanger Bros., of Dallas and Baker Linen Company of New York; mattresses from the Sealy Co.

 

Of course, sadly, the entire block of Crazy Well Water properties burned down in 1925. 

Published 11 Dec 2021 (c) K K R North

Republished with corrections 13 Mar 2022 (c) K K R North 

(corrections in red)