Ah – the 1920’s – those were the days.
Prohibition – that is what I am talking about. Gin tasted sweeter, drunk was more drunken, and hang-overs didn’t hurt.
Outlaws were admired, cops were Keystone, and gambling was found behind hidden doors – fun!
Roads were being built and tourism became an economy.
Tourist camps, hotels and motels supplied the needed respite for souls journeying toward the God given right of Manifest Destiny.
Ah – the 1920’s – the decade that Texarkana, Texas, aspired to raise a grand hotel along the Texas and Arkansas state line.
The Hotel Grim would be spectacular and a spectacle.
The architectural firm of Mann and Stern, while borrowing heavily from the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, designed an impressive structure, grand in a subtle way. A variety of building material inside and out created, somehow, a seamless, and elegant structure loaded with 90-degree angles – final cost 700,000 – yes, in 1925 dollars.
Guest could dine on the roof top – a dining room and garden, eight stories high, towering above the debauchery below.
The Grim, or so the legend goes, was a haven for illegal gambling. There are also rumors of an elaborate tunnel system below the town – allowing for a convenient transport of women and whisky – and the tunnels terminus, always the Grim.
Her sins aside, the Grim lasted until 1990, better that what can be said for other hotels of the day – hopefully Texarkana found around 11,000 dollars a year worth of use from the hotel.
For thirty years the hotel was vandalized by mother nature and vagrants, teenagers and time. Ceilings collapsed and floors caved, as the once grand hotel became an eyesore.
Today – revitalization of downtown Texarkana is bringing the Grim back – well kind-of. Texarkana is not planning a luxury hotel but affordable apartment.
Never-the-less, Grim will be operating again and that is more that I can say about other hotels of the day.
Tab across Texas 