Mason Square Hotel
Built in 1900.
If there's any doubt that Mason was truly a wild frontier town, look no further than the Mason Square Hotel, where bullet holes and buck horns are evidence of the town's raucous past.
Prior to 1885, Mason's Courthouse Square would have looked like an Old West movie set, lined with utilitarian frame buildings that were never destined for longevity. Eventually, several substantial sandstone structures were erected around the square, and despite devastation by fire and change, many of these structures are still standing today, including the Mason Square Hotel.
The building was first erected between 1884-and 1890, but after a fire destroyed the original property, a stone building with an iron and glass front took its place, paid for by businessman Anton Hoerster (learn more about Hoerster House). The Hoersters sold the property to Henry McDougall for $1900 in 1903, which is where our story of the building begins.
The McDougalls
The newest owner of this property in 1903, Henry McDougall (b. 1868) was a fun-loving and sociable character, as evidenced by his two passions: barkeeping and music. His father was a Scotsman by way of Canada, and his mother was part of the German community that settled in Fredericksburg, where Henry grew up. He came to work in Mason in 1896 and married a local girl, Martha Zesch (b. 1870), just a year later. Perhaps Martha was easily won over by Henry's generosity and compassion, for which he was well known. It is said that no struggling family ever suffered from lack of food if he knew about their situation.
At first Henry tended bar for Theo Schmidt at the Lone Star Saloon (pictured above), beginning in 1896. The next year, Henry took over the saloon and renamed it the Buckhorn. In 1903, Henry moved the Buckhorn to the building where the Mason Square Hotel is now located.
The Buckhorn Saloon Band
When Henry wasn't pouring drinks and chatting with his customers, he played in the Buckhorn Saloon Band. In the band photograph, Henry can be seen standing, and in another photograph, he poses alone. The band often played at dances in Mason and surrounding towns. While he and another musician were coming home from a dance in Llano late one summer night in 1901, their buggy was struck by lightning! (Source: Mason County News, July 26, 1901)
Photo Source: Bublik, Wanda McDougall, comp. Germans with a Scottish Name: The Alexander McDougall & Johanna Rahe Family Story. No publisher; revised and expanded, 2018.
The Good Die Young
Henry died unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack at age 37 in 1905. According to Henry’s sister, Mathilda, on the night Mason voted to go dry, Henry played “Nearer My God to Thee” on his fiddle at the Buckhorn, went home, and died before daybreak.
But like many good stories from the past, this one isn’t quite accurate.
Henry died on June 1, 1905, and the vote to go dry didn’t occur until June 12, 1905. (Maybe he was despondent because he knew which way it would go!) Mathilda may have borrowed the part about “Near My God to Thee” from the wreck of the Titanic, but that’s why historians use phrases such as “According to family tradition” or “Legend has it.”
After Henry
After Henry's death, Martha was left to raise three small sons by herself. Her brother helped her operate the saloon business at first, but she eventually began to rent out space to several other saloons, which operated here until 1911, when the New Drug Store opened. In 1912, she added a second story to the property to help supplement her income, renting the rooms upstairs to families and sometimes small businesses. Dr. James M. Thompson was the first upstairs tenant.
Martha never remarried, and she died in 1953 at age 82.
The Next Chapter
In 1918, Martha began leasing space to her enterprising younger brother, Will Zesch, who like Martha, was no stranger to tragedy. Five years after Henry's death, Will's first wife, Carrie, had also died tragically young, shortly following their daughter's birth.
Learn more about Will Zesch's life, as well as his historic overnight property, Fulton Guest House.
City Market & Bakery
Was Will Zesch unlucky in business or simply anxious to move on to his next big idea? Whatever the reason, by the time Will began leasing commercial space from Martha for his new bakery in 1918, he had established Mason's first ice and electric plant, opened a bottling business and a cotton gin, and helped run a saloon.
Fortunately, the bakery business stuck and by October 1924, Will had purchased the McDougall building from Martha and begun making plans to expand his bakery operation into a meat market with his two sons, Harold Zesch and A.W. (Bert) Zesch. The Zesch men got to work boring a well in the back and installing a barbeque pit and cold storage room, both of which still exist in the building today.
The business was successful for several years, but the Great Depression ushered in tough times for everyone, most of all the City Market & Bakery's customers, who could no longer afford to pay their accounts. Source. The market was forced to close, but the building would remain with the Zesch family for years, hosting a variety of businesses until 1970, when the Zesch heirs sold the building to the Mason Country Store.
Mason Square Hotel Today
Today, clues to the building's history can still be observed by hotel guests, including the pressed tin ceilings, the stained glass transoms, and the icebox that Will Zesch installed with his sons more than a century ago.
