Inn · Boerne, Texas · Built 1859; wings 1878
The Kendall (Kendall Inn)
Listed on the National Register as Kendall Inn
A two-story limestone inn of 1859 on the main plaza of Boerne in the Texas Hill Country, enlarged in 1878 with matching wings behind a 160-foot double gallery; a stage stop and health resort for most of a century.
History
Erastus and Sarah Reed, hotel keepers from Georgia, arrived in Boerne in 1859 and began a two-story inn of the local buttery-yellow limestone facing the main square, halfway along the road from San Antonio to Fredericksburg. The Reed House had wide galleries and tall windows to catch the breezes. Stagecoaches, cattle drives and army supply trains gathered on the square; trail bosses slept inside while their cowboys camped with the herds. The nomination records that the Army's experimental camel corps stopped in front of the inn, and that Col. Robert E. Lee, then posted in the Hill Country, was a frequent visitor shortly before he resigned his commission in 1861.
Col. Henry C. King bought the inn in 1869, promoted Boerne's dry climate to sufferers of asthma and tuberculosis, renamed it the King Place and made it a stage stop; his wife ran it after he went to the state senate. In 1878 the Dallas businessmen J. C. Rountree and W. L. Wadsworth bought it, added two wings of guest rooms in the same conservative Greek Revival manner, and renamed it the Boerne Hotel, with regular stage service and livery stables. Under later owners it was advertised as a health resort with special diets and doctors on call. Dr. J. H. Barnitz gave it the Kendall Inn name in 1909 and added electricity; private baths followed in 1922 under Robert and Maude Hickman. Mrs. W. F. Grinnan bought it in 1960, lived there and had closed it for gallery repairs when it was listed on the National Register in 1976.
“The double galleries are the Inn's most distinctive feature and span the entire 160 ft. facade of the hotel.”
Architecture
The inn is a two-story building of random ashlar limestone, a central block of 1859 flanked by narrow, symmetrical wings of 1878, each only one room deep. The central block follows a standard Greek Revival house plan, a wide hall between pairs of rooms. Every room opens onto the double gallery across the south front, which runs the full 160 feet and steps forward slightly at the old center block. Square chamfered posts with simple molded caps and brackets carry it, with a slat balustrade above. The main doorway has a matching door above it onto the upper gallery, and the front windows are tall six-over-six sash with stone lintels and sills. A low hipped roof of standing-seam tin sits behind a simple box cornice.
What to look for
- The 160-foot double gallery across the front
- Square chamfered gallery posts with bracketed caps
- Buttery-yellow limestone walls
- The slightly projecting 1859 center block
- The courthouse square the inn faces
Setting
The inn faces south onto Boerne's main plaza beside the Kendall County Courthouse, just west of U.S. Highway 87 and the town's Main Street, about thirty miles northwest of San Antonio. Cibolo Creek runs through town nearby, and the limestone buildings of Boerne's German settlers line the streets around the square.
Timeline
- 1859Erastus and Sarah Reed begin the Reed House
- 1869Bought by Col. Henry C. King; renamed the King Place
- 1878Wings added; renamed the Boerne Hotel
- 1909Dr. J. H. Barnitz names it the Kendall Inn and wires it for electricity
- 1922Private baths installed
- 1976Listed on the National Register on June 29
Where sources differ
- The nomination dates the camel corps stop to 1858, a year before it says construction began; the date or the building in question is uncertain.
- Lee's visits are reported in the nomination without a source; Wikipedia's claims of stays by Jefferson Davis and Dwight Eisenhower are not in the nomination.
- The nomination was digitized for this entry from the Texas Historical Commission's Atlas copy; NPGallery has no text for it.
