A vintage Wichita Falls building with a colorful history is poised to get a new lease on life.
Devonie Hutchinson is acquiring a century-old, two-story brick building at 200 North Burnett St., just west of the Bridwell Agricultural Center.
The entrepreneur and developer is considering a couple of possibilities for the old building, including a coffee shop with baked goods and possibly wine and beer sales. She envisions a couple of apartments on the second floor.
Whoever inhabits those apartments will live in rooms steeped in history — rooms that might cause a few fretful nights.
They were once the haunts of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Depression-era gangsters who wreaked death and destruction in a short crime wave with fellow outlaws.
Paul Schneider, who wrote “Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend,” wrote that Barrow came to Wichita Falls in 1930 and was followed a short time later by Parker, who worked as a waitress downtown.
They lived in the second-floor rooms of the old building known at the time as John Upton’s Grocery.
“For a few weeks it’s like the life Bonnie thought she’d always have,” Schneider wrote of the couple’s time in Wichita Falls.
Bonnie’s younger sister, Billie Jean, recalled the time in later years.
“They wanted to live right. They wanted to be married. Live right,” Billie Jean said in Schneider’s book.
Raymond Hamilton was a gang member who sometimes stayed with Bonnie and Clyde in Wichita Falls.
“Bonnie and Clyde are in love,” he recalled in the book. “She is jealous of him and he is jealous of her. Clyde doesn’t gal around any at all. Bonnie is the only girl he ever thinks about.”
Bonnie spent much of her time in the old building writing poetry while Clyde schemed his crime wave with buddies in the Bungalow Tourist Park cabins behind the store, Schneider’s book said.
The happy days ended in 1932 when the pair left Wichita Falls on a multistate crime spree that ended with their deaths in a hail of law officers’ bullets on May 23, 1934.
Their former home became Young’s Gro. & Mkt. by 1954.
The upstairs rooms continued as rentals with frequent turnover, according to want ads in the Times Record News.
The building sat vacant for periods.
But TRN reported it opened as the Neon Spur in 1998, a bar and grill that promised “Real Texas Barbecue” on its signage.
A covered area in back provided night breezes and cold beer facing a stage where bands played. The music and the beer stopped flowing by late 2013.
The building and grounds have since fallen into disrepair — which inspires Hutchinson.
“The worse it looks the more excited I can get,” she said.
She grew up in nearby neighborhoods.
“If you’re from somewhere, you live somewhere and you drive past it. Instead of complaining, I’d rather do something about it,” she said.
She said most of the people in the surrounding neighborhoods are working class families.
“Most of these people are hardworking, buy their house and then give the house to the kids. Everyone is just growing up and kind of hanging out. It’s a great neighborhood,” she said.
Taking on restoration is not a new task for Hutchinson.
She and husband, Garrett, operate Junk Busting Construction Company. They’ve restored a 100-year-old funeral home in Burkburnett and plan to take on an old store location on East Scott Avenue.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Historic outlaw hideaway in Wichita Falls to be restored | Exclusive
Reporting by Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News / Wichita Falls Times Record News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News | USA TODAY Network
