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Calvert Texas Gets a New Hotel

In 1898, Calvert Texas got a new business known as the Cottage Hotel that was born out of necessity. Some 28 years earlier, a German settler named Gottlieb Dirr came to Calvert to work in the coal mines and later ran a grocery/bakery on Main Street.

When Dirr died in 1898, his widow Hanna Dirr added a second story and an elaborate front with columns, a porch with railings, and opened the "Cottage Hotel."

The hotel was directly across from the Southern Pacific Railroad (formerly the Houston and Texas Central) and only two blocks from the station's depot. The hotel was popular with the traveling salesmen known as "drummers" and other commercial travelers who came through Calvert Texas. These salesman would visit the country stores in the area peddling their wares and returning to the hotel each evening (the Cottage Hotel has been restored and reopened for business as the Calvert Hotel).