East Texas Baptist University

The original hotel Marshall, the tallest building in Harrison County, was designed by noted Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, the Grand, was built in the Italian Renaissance architectural style with Art Deco elements completed in 1929.
For several decades, it served as the principal hotel for social and civic activity the city of Marshall, and most of East Texas. The Marshal Grand served as a meeting place for businessmen and East Texas oilmen. The East Texas Oil Field which has produced more than 5.2 billion barrels that at an average price of $55/bbl, would be worth around $285 billion today.

With the advent of chain motels and a change in traffic patterns due to the construction of Interstate 20, the building became vacant in the 1960s. It essentially remained vacant until 2003 when it was acquired by Jerry and Judy Cargill. In 2006, Judge Richard and Christina Anderson partnered with the Cargill interest to complete the renovation of the entire exterior and the first two floors of the interior. In 2013, the Andersons and Cargills donated the property to East Texas Baptist University where then President Blair Blackburn undertook to restore several of the interior floors to accommodate an expanded nursing program at ETBU, which currently enjoys the distinction of having the top rated nursing school within the state of Texas. The restoration of this building from contributions by the Cargills and Andersons, City of Marshall, Marshall Economic Development Corporation, hundreds of contributors from around the community, and East Texas Baptist University, under the leadership of Dr. Blackburn, is something that the entire community takes great pride in.

The original tile installed on the hotel was a Ludowici interlocking tile it remained in place until 2013 when the previous owners renovated the building, which included a re-roofing project. In attempt to cut cost during the renovation, a lesser manufacturer than the original Ludowici was chosen; resulting in that tile to only last 7 years. “We choose Ludowici not only because of their superior craftsmanship and attention to detail; but to also guarantee we could achieve the same life expectancy of 87 years by installing Ludowici.” During the product selection process Ludowici hosted ETBU members and Jeff Eubank Roofing at their New Lexington, OH factory.

The entirety of the job consisted of 15 pre-construction site visits, and 75+ on site safety meetings, amongst others. Challenges included several large cranes needed to hoist material and set scaffolding in place. Scaffolding was erected on all sides of the building to serve as a “catch deck” to protect pedestrians walking below and provide a working platform for the roofing crew.   Affixed to the scaffolding was a material hoist/ elevator served to take crew members & material and from the roof surface to the street 180’ below this hoist had a maximum capacity of 2500 lbs. per load, limiting the amount that could be hoisted each trip.