Rise & Fall: The Story of the Antro Hotel

Demolition continues this week on what was once a bustling place of activity for Clarendon residents – the Antro Hotel.

Initial plans were to raze the three story building entirely to the ground, but that scope of work has now changed with the first story walls to be left intact for future use as an outdoor park or entertainment space.

The site of the hotel has a long history dating back to the establishment of New Clarendon in 1887 when the railroad came through. The first building on that location was also a hotel. The Windsor Hotel, with guest rooms upstairs and a saloon downstairs, was operated by John T. Nugent for just a few years before the building burned to the ground in 1892.

Two other buildings that later occupied the same property were destroyed in 1921 when what was described as a “freak storm” hit the central business district and left several properties severely damaged.
Then in 1926 work got underway on what would become known as the Antro Hotel. When it opened in early 1927, The Clarendon News proclaimed: “The Antro Hotel stands as a permanent and appropriate memorial to the citizenship of the man for whom it was named, G.W. Antrobus.”

Antrobus was called the oldest settler of New Clarendon because he had camped on the present site of the town before it moved from the settlement’s original location on the Salt Fork. Antrobus first came to Donley County in 1884 and stayed several years, building ranch houses, corrals, and fences. Later, he returned to Wichita Falls. But he moved back in 1887 and entered the lumber business, eventually establishing what became Watson & Antrobus with its first store being on the site of the future hotel.

The opening of the Antro was met with great success. Designed by Amarillo architect Guy Carlander, the Antro consisted of 42 rooms with a lobby and coffee shop on first floor and a basement under the north half that was the site of numerous banquets throughout the years. The hotel rooms sold out several times in its first year of operation, and many clubs, including the Lions Club, made the Antro basement their home.

The hotel was originally managed by Col. E.O. Thompson of Amarillo, who also operated the famous Herring Hotel in that city. That agreement lasted only a few years before the Antrobus family resumed primary control of the business.

The first electric signs for the hotel and coffee shop were installed in 1927, although the original sign was not the one on the building at the time demolition started last week. The Watson & Antrobus hardware business moved into the south side of the building in 1932 and remained there 14 years.

In 1946, the hotel sold to Fletcher Curry, and the property was renamed the Donley Hotel. Likely about that time is when the sign was changed to the one that was still present up until last week. At one point in 1954, The Donley County Leader reported that Curry had installed a large neon sign – 48 feet by 24 feet – that said “HOTEL” about 16 feet above the roof.

It’s not certain the exact date the hotel closed. By the early 1970s it was being referred to in news articles as “the old Donley Hotel” and the was site of rummage sales. By 1977, it had come under the ownership of Clyde Peabody and was sometimes referred to as the Peabody Hotel, even though it never operated as such. In March of that year, G.W. Estlack, who owned the neighboring print shop, met with the city about condemning the building. He asked the Board of Aldermen to notify Peabody to put the building in a reasonable state of repair, possibly reduced to a one-story building, as it was a fire hazard.

By 1982, the city and then Mayor Shirley Clifford was pressuring Peabody to do something with the building. By 1989, Peabody had turned the property over to the city along with some bond money, which was put to use to “mitigate the nuisance” presented by the dilapidated roof and upper floors. The exterior walls remained sound, and there was still some hope that something might come of the building, but the removal of the roof at that time as likely was the ultimate death sentence for the Antro.

Ten years later, the city was again looking at razing the building, but when the demolition bid came in too high, the aldermen put the property up for public bid. Russell Keown purchased the property for $5, and then spent many years trying to keep people out of the building before he donated it to the Clarendon Economic Development Corporation four years ago.

The CEDC sealed up the building from public entrance and engaged an engineer to draw up plans for the gutting of the hotel building and subsequent bracing of the exterior walls, but cost estimates caused that project to be put on hold. Time ran out for the Antro on July 29, 2018, when another freak storm hit downtown and a straight-line north wind clocked at 84 miles per hour pushed much of the north wall into the building’s interior.

Today, several architectural elements of the building are being salvaged during the demolition of the Antro Hotel, including the sign that hung on the front for so many years. The CEDC Monday night discussed the possibility of bringing in an architect to come up with a plan to re-use those elements and make the property an active part of downtown for the future.