The Giesel House

The Giesel House has gone back to its first trade. Stephen and Janice Scheve bought the neighboring P.A. Smith Hotel in 2017 and added the Giesel House to its restoration in 2019. State building filings list a 2020 renovation of the 6,687-square-foot stone masonry and wood building, with a new floor structure and relocated stairs, as the hotel's expansion. After the hotel reopened on December 31, 2021, Texas Highways found a gift shop, a second-floor bar and a three-bedroom penthouse suite in the adjoining building. It is privately owned.

What the plaque says

The Giesel House Situated near the Houston & Texas Central Railroad Depot, this three-story stone building was erected in 1860 by R. H. Giesel (1833-1872) and his German-born wife Fannie (1828-1881) to house a restaurant and hotel. A two-story frame porch originally extended across the front of the structure. Giesel, a Confederate veteran, served as temporary mayor in 1867, when a yellow fever epidemic struck Navasota. Fannie Giesel renamed her restaurant "The Good Morning John" in 1871. She managed the business until her death in 1881. Later owners operated the hotel as "The Exchange" and "The Hoyle". (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Navasota — steps away
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 5.8 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 5.8 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 9.1 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• Mickelborough Building — steps away
• Lewis J. Wilson Building — steps away
• La Bahia Trail — steps away
• Saint Paul's Episcopal Church — 0.2 mi