Saved By YouTube

One of Texas’s most legendary hotels found rescuers on the World Wide Web.

- Jana Bommersbach

Grandma, you can find anything on YouTube,” Erin Ghedi’s 17-year old granddaughter, Gabby, told her four years ago.

What Erin and her husband, Jim, found was a precious piece of Texas history and the restoration project of their lives. In a homemade video, members of Seguin’s Main Street Program held handwritten signs, begging someone to save their beloved Magnolia Hotel that was listed as one of “Texas’s Most Endangered Places.”

Erin, a retired museum curator and historian, was touched enough by the plea on YouTube for the couple to make the 40-minute drive from their home in Austin to Seguin.