An excerpt reprinted with permission from the Web site www.bakerhotel.us



In 1877 James A. Lynch and his family settled in a valley 48 miles west of Fort Worth. Tired of hauling water from the nearby Brazos River, Mr. Lynch had a well dug on his property.

The water had a funny taste and at first was believed to be poison. Mrs. Lynch continued to drink the water and found it did not harm her. In fact, the water seemed to cure her rheumatism. The word spread and many came to see if they could also receive a cure.

A third well dug was made famous from the fact that a woman who suffered epilepsy drank the water daily. Legend says that after she drank the water she was cured and they named the well the Crazy Woman Well, later just the Crazy Well.

The town was originally named Ednaville, but after the waters began to draw people the town was renamed Mineral Wells. Many pavilions and hotels were built so that the thousands who came there had a place to stay. The Damion, Fairfield Inn, the Hexagon, the Oxford, the Period, and the Piedmont Hotel are just to name a few.

The Crazy Water Hotel was built where the Crazy Well is. After the first hotel burnt down, the Collins brothers from Fort Worth rebuilt the Crazy Hotel and planned to market the water.

Meanwhile a group of citizens in Mineral Wells didn’t like the fact that outsiders were going to make a profit from their waters. They raised money to build their own hotel. That’s when they got T.B. Baker to build the Baker Hotel.

Theodore Brasher Baker was born July 11, 1875, in Washington, Iowa. He was the youngest of five living children to William and Leoramia (Grayson) Baker. T.B. had three brothers, Martin C. Baker, W.R. Baker, Michael R. Baker and a sister, Myla Baker.

T.B. went to elementary school at Cawker City, Kan. He completed high school in Beloit, Kan. T.B.’s first business venture was a steam laundry in Beloit, Kan. He later sold his interests to his partner, Mr. Hegberg. His father was in the hotel business and T.B. Baker started his own career as a night clerk at the Ave Hotel in Beloit, Kan. He was there for 18 months. He then went on to manage the Greenwood at Eureka, Kan., The Whitely at Emporia, The Goodlander at Fort Scott, Kan., The Kingfisher at Kingfisher, Okla., and the Connor at Joplin, Mo.

While vacationing in San Antonio in 1915 he acquired the lease on the St. Anthony Hotel, which began his operation in Texas.

While managing the Greenwood, T.B. married Miss Mayme Crawley, a native of Knoxville, Tenn. They had one daughter, Mary Louise Baker, she was born Nov. 5, 1905, but she died in July 1907.

Mr. Baker would be involved a number of hotel ventures in Missouri and Texas–including San Antonio, Fort Worth and Dallas.

In 1925, T.B. opened the famous Baker Hotel in Dallas with 700 rooms. The hotel was designed after the Peabody Hotel in Tennessee.

More hotel ventures would follow in Galveston, Beaumont, Port Arthur and Birmingham, Ala. Visit www.bakerhotel.us for more information on the hotels owned and developed by T.B. Baker.

Mineral Wells was starting to grow because the mineral waters were beginning to be known worldwide as a cure all for many types of illnesses. The water was big business. Nine citizens of Mineral Wells got together to raise money to build a large resort hotel. They raised $150,000 with the help of 253 stockholders.

All they needed was someone with the know how to get the project started. T.B. Baker of Baker Hotels was contacted in 1925 and agreed to take over the project for the stockholders. Mr. Baker was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the state of Texas at the time. Familiar with the mineral bath concept in Mineral Wells, this gave T.B. Baker an opportunity to have a different kind of hotel catering to people seeking the benefit of the curing waters.

The Mineral Wells Hotel Company was formed and headed by T.B. Baker. Wyatt C. Hedrick was hired as the architect to design the hotel after the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Ark., another hotel known for its water and baths. The Mineral Wells hotel has similar designs to the Arlington Hotel.

Mr Hedrick was not an architect but a structural engineer. Because of the lack of licensing back then he was able to work as an architect and practice that profession. Work began on the hotel in 1926 but was stopped after Mr. Baker made a trip to California. He had visited a hotel with a swimming pool and decided the new Baker Hotel must have one in the front of the hotel. The hotel site was then moved back and the existing structure of the basement was kept and the swimming pool was placed on top of the site where the hotel was to be built. This allowed the area under the pool to be utilized as work areas for the hotel and also a changing area for guests was placed under the pool.

The pool was an Olympic-sized, above-ground pool to be filled with the curing mineral waters. It was the first swimming pool built for a hotel in Texas. The Baker Hotel was to be 14 stories with 450 rooms for guests and was the first skyscraper to be built outside a major metropolitan area. The hotel was said to be a “Spanish revival commercial high rise.”

Mr. Baker had many modern ideas for the hotel such as circulating ice water for the guest rooms, which he used in many of his other hotels. The hotel was to be fully air conditioned, which was a novelty during this time. The lights and fans were controlled by the key lock on the guest’s room doors. When the guest left the room and locked the door, the lights and fans went off. Valet doors were also installed so the guests might place clothing to be cleaned in them and not be disturbed by the employee who came to remove the items for cleaning.

The Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, opened its doors Nov. 9, 1929, and its grand opening was Nov. 22, 1929, just two weeks after the great stock market crash. Even though this was a dark time in history the hotel opened with great fanfare, with Tal Henry and his North Carolinas-Victor Recording Orchestra, cabaret acts, a big dinner and dancing in the ballroom.

The hotel continued to do well throughout the Great Depression, bringing cattlemen to regain their health and widows to marry them. The Baker Hotel cost $1.2 million to build and employed a good deal of the population of Mineral Wells. The hotel was planned to host conventions to bring people to Mineral Wells and had a meeting capacity of 2,500 in a city with the population of 6,000.

The first convention was the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs held Nov. 11-15 in 1929 before the grand opening. This was just the first of many, many conventions. Many people would come for the conventions and stay for the baths and water.

Burt Orndorf was the first manager of the Mineral Wells Baker Hotel and was vice president of Baker Hotels. He started with Baker Hotels in 1926. Henry

See HISTORY, page 8A

HISTORY

From page 5A



Love was the assistant manager,and was born and raised in Fort Worth. He joined the staff in 1920 at the Texas Hotel and later became the assistant manager of the Dallas Baker Hotel.

The Baker Hotel of Mineral Wells had three areas for dancing and had some of the largest names of the time performed there. Jack Amlung, Herbie Kaye, Guy Lombardo, Mary Martin, Lawrence Welk and Paul Whiteman all performed at the Baker Hotel. The ballroom on the 12th floor was named the Cloud Room because of the painted clouds on the ceiling and was busy every weekend with one band or another and became the place to be.

The list of celebrities that might be found staying at the Baker at one time or another includes Alvin Barkley, Clyde Barrow, Pat Boone, Jack Dempsey, Marlene Dietrich, Dale Evans, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Samuel Goldwyn, Jean Harlow, Lyndon Johnson, Sammy Kay, Helen Keller, Dorothy Lamour, Dr. Charles Mayo, Gisele Mckinzie, Tom Mix, Clint Murchinson Sr., Bonnie Parker, Gen. John J. Pershing, Sam Rayburn, Will Rogers, Roy Rogers, Elliot Roosevelt, the Three Stooges and Sophie Tucker. J.W. Neel, owner of Maxwell House Coffee, was fond of the Baker Hotel. U.S. Sen. Ed Moore of Oklahoma was said to have visited the Baker so much that if you needed him that’s where you would find him.

In 1932 the Baker began to have money problems. The Baker never closed its doors. The hotel reorganized as the Resort Hotel Company, with nephew Earl Maynard Baker helping to run the hotel.

Myla Baker, T.B.’s sister, lived at the Gunter in San Antonio. She was born Sept. 17, 1879. Myla was 5 feet, 4 inches tall and had brown hair and brown eyes. On May 8, 1933, she moved to the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells. She occupied a suite on the seventh floor using rooms 714, 716 and 718. She would take trips alone to Europe and buy items to decorate the different hotels. She also helped at the hotel with different charity events. T.B. Baker decided to pass control of the Baker Hotel to his nephew, Earl, due to financial problems.

Earl M. Baker had already worked at the Baker as manager and also ran the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio. Earl was married to Gladys with two daughters, Dorothy Ann and Betty Jean, but kept a mistress named Virginia Brown at the Baker. Virginia had a suite of rooms on the seventh floor. Virginia is said to still be there – often you will smell her perfume in her suite and throughout the hotel.

When T.B. passed the Baker on to Earl, he had Earl agree to make up a trust for T.B.’s sister, Myla, agreeing to pay her $9,000 a year from the dividends of the Gunter Hotel.

On Oct. 13, 1940, Fort Wolters was located in Mineral Wells and became the largest infantry replacement center during World War II. During this time the Baker Hotel was at its peak and the population of Mineral Wells was well over 30,000. After the war Fort Wolters reopened as a helicopter training center for the Air Force. This brought new life to the Baker Hotel during 1951. The state Republican convention was at the Baker during the years of 1952 and 1955. The Democratic convention was held during 1954 at the Baker Hotel.

Earl Baker said that when his 70th birthday came he would close the doors of the Baker. True to his word, on April 30, 1963, Earl closed the doors of the Baker Hotel. This put 250 people out of a job and ruined the social life of the citizens of Mineral Wells. In August of 1963 the hotel went up on the auction block. Bidding was very light and nothing really came of it. In 1965 a group of local leaders formed the Civic Development Corporation and reopened the hotel, paying Earl Baker monthly checks for the hotel.

While visiting the hotel on Dec. 3, 1967, Earl Baker was found in the Baker Suite on the floor after having a heart attack. He was rushed to nearby Nazareth Hospital but died later that day.

The Baker Hotel closed in 1972 due to slim profits. Today the Baker Hotel of Mineral Wells sits empty waiting for someone to give it new life. As recent as 2003, at least one business continued to operate at the Baker, but it closed. Tours were given by volunteers well versed in the hotel’s history, but those have ended, largely because the City of Mineral Wells has closed the hotel to the public for safety reasons.

Sadly the roof of the hotel is in need of repairs and leaks have caused great damage to the “Grand Old Lady” of Mineral Wells. The Baker sits waiting for the day that someone will again restore her to her glory. Perhaps apartments, offices, a museum or even a retirement home would be a good choice to continue the life of the Baker. The current owner of the Baker Hotel is Greg Horne of Phoenix, Ariz.