The Kitten Snack Bar, Hotel Beaumont 1940s

In 1901, America’s Petroleum Age was born when the Lucas Gusher on Spindletop Hill, an oil field in Beaumont, Texas, exploded with such force that it began producing 100,000 barrels a day.

Soon, the small lumber town of Beaumont – pop 9,000 – was overcome with speculators, jobseekers and sightseers. It’s estimated that more than 40,000 descended on the town in southern Texas in the first few weeks of the strike.

Dozens of oil companies were formed, restaurants and hotels and shops were overwhelmed, and a building boom began.

In 1919, a group of 217 investors ploughed the-then almost unimaginable sum of $1m to build the magnificent Beaumont Hotel. This eleven-story hotel on Orleans Street near Pearl Street had 250 rooms and not one but two ballrooms – the Rose Room and the Sky Room.

Described as a ‘hotel of distinction in the center of everything’ in the town’s downtown business district, it was one of the early hotels in the region to have the modern convenience of electricity.

One of the major investors must have had a thing for cats because the hotel’s café and snack bar was called the Kitten and the fine dining restaurant was called the Black Cat.

The menus for both establishments feature wonderful illustrations of feline creatures with green eyes. Both these menus are in our collection.

The Kitten menu cover features a friendly little cat in a chef's hat and apron, ready to serve customers at the snack bar.

This historic building was used as a retirement community from 1977–2011 and is currently vacant.