The Seahorse Inn

Gay hotelier developed first Mustang Island beach resort in 1950s, opened doors to LGBTQ guests

DAVID WEBB | Contributing Writer
davidwaynewebb@yahoo.com

PORT ARANSAS — The Texas Gulf Coast is known for growing colorful characters, and Jack Coffman Cobb, a gay hotelier who opened Mustang Island’s first beach resort and developed its first beach apartments, still stands out as one of the most memorable almost four decades after his death.

Port Aransas is no longer the small fishing village it was when Cobb launched his resort on top of one of the beach town’s highest sand dunes in 1956. And today, most of the newcomer residents and visitors know little of Cobb and his avant-garde hotel that featured one of the area’s first swimming pools.

But old-timers well remember him and the hotel he christened the Seahorse Inn which featured an elegant restaurant and bar. They also recall with a shudder the grisly murder of Cobb’s life partner and heir, Michael Robert, in 1996 that led to the resort’s demise 11 years after the developer’s death. (You can read about that online at DallasVoice.com/a-man-and-a-murder-remembered.)

Jack Cobb with a friend at Seahorse Inn

In the beginning
When the Seahorse Inn first opened, its flamboyant operator and the guests he sought out from the arts world — many of whom were gay — quickly became a topic of gossip and speculation about wild parties and bizarre behavior. From its opening, it served as a gathering spot and a place of employment for gay residents of the Corpus Christi Bay Area.

The Seahorse Inn provided a place to socialize and “earn a little money” playing the piano in the restaurant and bar when he was living in Aransas Pass with his parents, said Viktor Andersson, now director of worship and music at Calvary Lutheran Church in Richland Hills. “There were a lot of society dames and guys from San Antonio and Austin hanging out there,” he said. “They weren’t all gay, but some were. It was a mixed crowd. I always had a good time.”

Former employee Chery Crenshaw Coronel said one untrue story that persists is that drunken partiers once carried the hotel club’s grand piano down the dunes to the beach for a party where everyone got naked. The truth, she said, is that a photo shoot was staged early one morning at dawn with a pianist in a tux playing the piano as a ballet dancer performed and seagulls flew overhead. Everyone got up early, and the piano was driven to the beach on the road in the back of a pickup truck, she said.
Cobb was not there, she added, saying, “It was just a fun morning. It wasn’t anything bad.”

In those days Port Aransas’ population numbered only 551, according to the 1950 Census — roughly a fifth of its current population — and many residents lived simpler lives in comparison to Cobb and his friends and guests. Tourists in those days tended to show up in Port Aransas to go fishing on the Gulf of Mexico on boats, not to party at elite gatherings, although drinking is still a common pastime for many. Locals like to joke that Port Aransas “is a drinking town with a fishing problem.”

For his part, the never-married Cobb seemed to do little to dissuade speculation by the town’s disapproving gossips about what was going on at the hotel or to avoid attracting attention to himself. Other, more free-thinking residents considered him a hoot and wanted to join the festivities. In turn, they were welcomed by Cobb.

A hard-drinking opera buff and art and antiques collector who loved music, Cobb wore a full-length fur coat (or a smoking jacket in warmer weather) with riding boots and drove around town in a flashy Cadillac when he was not traveling the world to follow the opera circuit. And while some conservative residents had no desire to mix with the crowd at the Seahorse Inn’s bar and restaurant — known as the Miyako Yacht Club — many affluent and adventuresome residents of the Corpus Christi Bay Area, San Antonio and other parts of Texas arrived in droves to dine and socialize. Private parties at the club sometimes catered to traditional groups like graduating seniors one night and then rich socialites the next.

Cobb’s nephew Mark Cobb said his Uncle Jack, who was his father’s brother, had several male lovers over the years, and that he was the “black sheep” of the family. He called his uncle “extremely eccentric.”

Although he and his brother wanted to visit their uncle’s hotel when they were children to swim in the pool, Mark Cobb said his father forbade it. “Our father kept us away from that atmosphere because of the type of people hanging around the hotel,” Cobb said. “He didn’t want my brother and I exposed to it.”

Jack Cobb’s route to the Seahorse
The Cobb family moved to Port Aransas from Dallas, where Jack Cobb was born in 1926, to open fishing lodges after World War II.

There were three brothers who all helped their parents with the family business. After high school Cobb attended Tulane University in New Orleans, and he graduated from North Texas State University in Denton with a bachelor’s degree before moving to New York City where he earned a master’s degree at Columbia University.

After resettling in Texas, Cobb saw an opportunity that most old-timers never took advantage of because of their fear of tropical storms, especially hurricanes, Cobb’s nephew said. Beach land was inexpensive, and Cobb bought a large swath of it — from the tall dune to down near the water, he said.

“I seem to recall that Jack had a partner in the early days, and it’s possible he brought some money into the deal, but I’m not positive,” Mark Cobb said. “My uncle did not inherit any money from my grandparents, as they did not have money. I seem to recall that he got loans to buy the land and build the Seahorse Inn.”

The photo of the grand piano on the beach was staged, not part of a drunken party

The hotel built off of 11th Street, today a major thoroughfare to a vast expanse of condos and short-term rentals, was a quick — and overwhelming — success, the nephew said. Wealthy families from other parts of Texas were building vacation homes in the area, and the Murchison family from Dallas owned a vacation home near the hotel, he added.

“It was the happening place for the money crowd,” Mark Cobb said. “His parties attracted the who’s who in society. It was pretty famous for its time.”

Jack Cobb quickly made a lot of money, and he spent it in part by following the opera around the world, his nephew said. Frequent destinations were Italy, France and England. “He was an opera fanatic,” Mark Cobb explained.

Longtime Port Aransas resident and real estate agent Suzanna Reeder said she worked the summer of 1965 as hostess at the Miyako Yacht Club — so named because of its Asian décor — during her college years. Cobb’s partner at the time was John Rusk, and he was Cobb’s “right hand” at the hotel and club, Reeder said. The club, she said, “was amazingly beautiful, certainly extraordinary for the time. The parties were exceptional.”

A few years after he built the Seahorse Inn, Cobb developed a group of apartments near the hotel, Reeder said. She noted that the building of the hotel and the apartments occurred before Port Aransas developed strict building guidelines and codes. A search of the archives at Port Aransas City Hall revealed no architecture plans on file for the Seahorse Inn or evidence of a building permit for construction of the hotel in the 1950s or the apartments in the 1960s.

In 1982 Cobb built 14 luxury apartments, and there was a building permit obtained for that. The initial construction of the hotel and apartments predated the massive beach development began in the 1970s by developer J.C. Barr, Reeder said. “It was a huge undertaking to construct the apartments, and it involved big money,” she said.

The lack of oversight by Port Aransas officials probably helped, at least in part, Cobb to perpetuate a hoax, claiming that the Seahorse Inn was designed by famed Texas architect O’Neil Ford. Ford actually did design many houses in the area about that time, but not Cobb’s hotel.

Still, for almost three decades until his death, Cobb maintained that Ford, who is called the “grandfather of Texas Modernism” and was recognized as the leading architect in the American Southwest, had designed the Seahorse Inn. That was disproven late in 2022.

Research discovered a Dec. 10, 1955, entry in Ford’s diary — that is now in the Alexander Architectural Archives at the University of Texas Libraries in Austin — noting that Cobb had visited him to ask his opinion of the design he had created for the hotel to be built in Port Aransas.

Ford’s daughter, Wandita Turner, had suggested a search of the diaries that she donated to the library. The revelation surprised her, but she said that she was glad to get it cleared up. “I know he designed several houses in Port Aransas at the time,” she said. “I was very young, and my memories are vague.”

Ford wrote, “Jack Cobb of Port Aransas came by with a sketch of a plan he has made for a lodge he expects to build on the old Wofford Cain Dune.”

He called Cobb a “polished young man” and noted that the sketch was rather good for a “rank amateur,” but he called it a “damned shame for that uninspired thing to be built in that beautiful place.”

Another apparent untruth told by Cobb was that he was a graduate of Julliard’s School of Music in New York City. The Office of Alumni Relations said a search of records revealed that he had never been a student there.

A complex man
Based on the observations of former employees, Cobb appears to have been complex, unpredictable and impulsive. During her time working for him, Reeder said, she found Cobb to be “austere and business-like,” leaving Rusk to mostly manage and interact with the employees. “He wasn’t real personable to the help,” she said. “But he was obviously running the show.”

On the other hand, Cheryl Crenshaw Coronel found Cobb to be engaging when she worked for him many years after Reeder did. She went to work for Cobb managing the Seahorse Inn during the winters when he would leave for extended stays in Europe.

By this time Cobb’s former partner, John Rusk, had moved on (reportedly to New Mexico where he died), and Cobb was living and working with Michael Robert, who had met Cobb while working as a lifeguard for him in his youth.

“We were very good friends,” Coronel said. “I just loved them both.”

The restaurant and bar were no longer open by the time Coronel went to work there. It had closed after the hotel had suffered a fire and hurricane damage.

Cobb had a temper, Coronel noted. He loved to listen to music, and if guests at his parties were talking too much, he sometimes got mad and told them to leave.

“He loved wine,” she said. “He drank wine from morning to night. He had it delivered by the case.”

Cobb’s lifestyle apparently caught up with him as he aged; Coronel said he often was ill and was prone to falling. During a trip to Longview in 1985 to attend a good friend’s funeral, he died of a heart attack at age 59.

The Seahorse Inn after Jack Cobb
Cobb left the Seahorse Inn and the rest of his estate to Michael Robert, who led the hotel in a somewhat different direction. It had always been an LGBT-friendly business, but under Robert’s ownership it became a gay hotel advertising clothing-optional facilities. Robert was an AIDS activist, and he also hosted LGBT parties and other events.

After Robert’s murder in 1996, the hotel and most of its exquisite furnishings were sold by his heirs, and two lesbians bought the hotel in 1997, renaming it Belle’s Sea Inn. They continued to welcome gay guests, but they ended the clothing-optional policy and forbade demonstrations of public affection.

Today, the hotel is still known as Belle’s Sea Inn, and — after 67 years — it is a victim of its age. Renovations have failed to keep up with the building’s deterioration, and the original design has been drastically changed.

Although the hotel continues to welcome LGBTQ guests, it is now for sale again by its latest owner, Andy Taubman, who bought it from the two women in 2015. `