The Woodbine Hotel Still Marks Madisonville's Railroad Years

The Woodbine Hotel is really two houses stitched into one downtown landmark. Jake and Sarah Shapira had run a boarding house on the site before it burned in 1903. To rebuild, they bought two kit houses at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair: one Queen Anne, the other Eastlake. They joined them with parlors, rooms, and wide verandas.

The material stayed local even when the plans traveled. East Texas longleaf pine was milled in Huntsville, and nearly 200 bluebonnet motifs were carved above the Woodbine's doors and windows. Those details give the building more personality than a date on a plaque; the hotel wears its Texas identity in the woodwork.

Its timing also tells a town story. The International-Great Northern Railroad completed the Navasota-to-Madisonville branch in 1903, and Madisonville had an estimated 833 residents in 1904. A new hotel near the square fit a county seat receiving train passengers, traveling salesmen, merchants, and courthouse visitors.

Roads later replaced much of that traffic, and the rail line was abandoned in 1944. The Woodbine fell into disrepair, then was restored in 1979. It entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and became a Texas historic landmark in 1982. The tracks are gone, but the joined houses still hold the shape of Madisonville's brief railroad season.