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During the 1890�s, Hirsch�s Cordova Hotel and Bar were among the showplaces of Beaumont. The latter knew no peer between Houston and New Orleans in 1895, containing 211 incandescent lights, 11 ceiling fans, 2 private wine rooms, a bar and French plate mirrors valued at $5,000, and a stock of beer, liquors, wines, and tobaccos that one might expect to find only in a northern city. In 1897, his elegant 3-story brick residence, with its oriental cupola tower, similar to those of the first synagogue, was among the most ornate of the mansions on Calder Avenue, and a photo of it survives in a 1900 edition of the Sabine Pass News. It was the first resident to be dedicated by a secret organization, the Sons of Herman.²⁷

H. Peristein, whose career began at fifty cents a day, worked as a blacksmith for Tom Ridley until the former acquired his own shop on Pearl Street in March, 1892. By means of frugal living, he acquired real estate at a rapid pace, and assisted further by the oil boom of 1901, he built Beaumont�s first �skyscraper� in 1907, at the time the tallest building between Houston and New Orleans. S. H. Kress and Company occupied the first floor of the Peristein Building for several decades.²⁸

In April, 1897, a disastrous fire destroyed fourteen Beaumont business firms, none of them Jewish, but three Jewish dry goods stores were heavily damaged, namely F. Deutser�s on Crockett Street, Mothner Brothers, and S. Sternberg.²⁹

²⁷Biography of M. H. Hirsch, Sabine Pass News, May 5, 1900; ibid., for photo of H. Hirsch�s residence; see also �Emerald of the Neches,� pp. 540-541; biography and photos, Cordova Hotel Bar and Hirsch residence, Oil Exchange, Advantages and Conditions of Beaumont and Port Arthur Today, 1902, pp. 14, 83.

²⁸Blurn et al., �Founders and Builders,� pp. 4-5; E. P. Weinbaum, Shalom, America: The Per/stein Success Story (San Antonio: 1969), pp. 1, 16; see also photo, Peristein Building, B. C. C., Beaumont: The Twentieth Century City, 1912, p. 11.

²⁹�Big Blaze at Beaumont,� Galveston Daily News, April 18, 1897.