By BARBARA GREEN
editor@bowienewsonline.com
“NOCONA, Texas – The new modern 40-room brick Hotel Fillmore was formally opened with a banquet and ball Wednesday evening. The spacious dining room was filled to overflowing with the public-spirited citizens of Nocona and their guests from other cities.” Oct. 23, 1924, Wichita Falls Times Record News.

Nearly 100 years after that grand opening, the Hotel Fillmore has new life breathed into it by new owners Eddie Fenoglio Jr. and his wife Chris. They have filled the downstairs retail spaces, replaced windows boarded up for 60 years, restored penny tile floors and now walk the dusty, but pristine pine floors trying to envision what’s next for the hotel.
Located at the corner of Clay and Elm Street, the two-story Hotel Fillmore was the gem of North Texas when it opened in 1924. It featured modern amenities such as steam heat, a dining room fit for banquets of up to 250 people, hot and cold running water, in-room baths for some rooms and electric lights. It was described as well-lighted and ventilated across its 42 rooms.
The ground floor had a drugstore, Our Drug, a barber shop, a cafe, office space and an expansive lobby with a beautiful carpeted stairway to the upstairs rooms.
It also was adjacent to another magnificent building for its time, the Millstone Theater, which was next door. It opened in 1920 and had been built for motion pictures complete with a pipe organ. Later the post office was put in the building.
History shows the theater closed May 22, 1937. After the theater closed the community still used the building for pageants and other programs. The hotel closed in the mid-1960s. Eddie explains when the Balls lived upstairs above the theater there were six rooms and they had boarders. There were lots of oil men working the 1920s oil boom and they stayed full. Bunny found it was one of the reasons they decided they needed to build a hotel.

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