Hidden Speakeasy | Pickleball Court | Sleeps 14

Restored 1930 rooming house. Somewhere inside The Union is a room that does not appear on any floor plan. Find it and you have earned your drink. Private pickleball court out back, lit for night play. A theater with four real recliners and bass you feel. A game room with poker table, foosball, two TVs. Outside, a fire pit, string lights, and a live oak lit up at night. 5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths, two of them luxe en-suites off the master bedrooms. Sleeps 14. Downtown Longview. The space THE UNION BY GOSWICK LANE There is a hidden room in this house. It is a speakeasy. Low light, the proper feel, and a door you would walk past a hundred times without seeing it. We are not going to tell you where it is or what it looks like from the outside. What we will tell you is that guests miss it all weekend, and the ones who find it do not stop talking about it. One hint, and it is the only one you get up front: it pushes in. Do not pull on anything. The house is called The Union because of what is outside the front door. In 1873 two railroads met here, the Texas and Pacific running east to west and the International-Great Northern coming up from the south, and the crossing they built grew into one of the longest in Texas at eleven sets of tracks. This neighborhood exists because those lines joined. So does this house. There is more of that story at the bottom if you want it. Today it is a restored 1930s rooming house with 5 bedrooms, a hidden speakeasy, a private pickleball court, a theater, and room for 14 people to spread out and not get on each other's nerves. Please note: The Union sits in a historic district that is actively being revitalized. We work hard to restore these old buildings and keep the property safe and comfortable, but there may be train noise and occasional foot traffic on the sidewalks near the house. Message us before booking if you have any questions. ☆ THE SPEAKEASY ☆ ☀ A real hidden room with a speakeasy feel. Pour a drink, sit down, and enjoy the fact that most people who stay here never see it ☀ No, it is not the closet. No, it is not the attic ☀ Most groups find it the first night ☀ It pushes in. It does not pull out. Please do not pull on the trim ☀ If you truly get stuck, message us and we will point you in the right direction. But hunting for it is half the fun, so give it an honest try first ☆ PRIVATE PICKLEBALL COURT ☆ ☀ Painted court on our private fenced pad. No reservations, no waiting on a city court, no sharing it with strangers ☀ It is not regulation. It is 15 by 40 instead of 20 by 44, because that is the space we had and we would rather have a real court than no court ☀ The kitchens are a full 7 feet on each side, so the game plays right at the net. It is the width that will get you. Cross court shots you would put away all day suddenly go out ☀ Paddles and balls provided, in the outdoor storage room ☀ Court lighting on a switch, so play does not stop when the sun goes down ☀ Cornhole boards and bags in the same storage room ☀ The net picks up and moves in about 30 seconds. Set it against the fence when you need the pad back for parking ☆ THE THEATER ☆ ☀ Four real theater recliners, the kind with the deep lean and the cupholder ☀ 75" Smart TV ☀ A surround system with genuine low end. Put on an action movie and feel the bass come up through the seat ☀ Playstation 5 with 2 controllers and a deep game library (full list at the bottom) ☀ Small, dark, and intimate. Four in the chairs, a few more on the floor against them. This is not a stadium, it is a proper little screening room ☆ THE GAME ROOM ☆ ☀ Full poker table ☀ Foosball table ☀ Two Smart TVs ☀ A deep shelf of games including craps, Crokinole, Quoridor, Wahoo, and Longview-Opoly (full list at the bottom) ☆ OUTSIDE ☆ ☀ A custom fire pit with The Union logo cut into it, built for this house, with 8 Adirondack chairs pulled around it ☀ A massive live oak that shades the whole yard by day and gets lit up at night. It is the best thing back there and it was here long before we were ☀ String lights overhead ☀ Natural gas grill, plumbed into the house. It will not run out of propane at 8pm with everyone's dinner on it ☀ Outdoor storage room for the pickleball and cornhole gear ☆ PARKING ☆ ☀ Private fenced lot. Four vehicles fit comfortably, five or six if you do not mind a tight turnaround ☀ Please take your time backing up. The fence and especially the gate are easy to catch and expensive to fix ☆ LIVING ROOM ☆ ☀ Big sectional and a leather chair ☀ 55" Smart TV ☀ Electric fireplace ☀ Sofa bar table with seating for 4, good for dinner or for getting work done ☆ KITCHEN ☆ ☀ Full kitchen with generous cabinet space and a great backsplash ☀ Electric stove, microwave, dishwasher ☀ Dinnerware and glassware for 14 ☀ Keurig for coffee ☀ Bar with seating for 3 ☆ DINING ☆ ☀ Large table seating 6 to 8 ☀ High chair so the little one can sit with everybody ☀ Between the table, the bar, and the sofa bar table, there is a seat for all 14 ☀ Please no food in the bedrooms or the theater ☆ DOWNSTAIRS MASTER W/ EN-SUITE ☆ ☀ KING bed ☀ Huge room ☀ Dresser and a large closet with hangers ☀ Ceiling fan and box fan ☀ En-suite bath with tub shower ☀ Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash provided ☆ UPSTAIRS MASTER W/ EN-SUITE ☆ ☀ KING bed ☀ Huge room ☀ Dresser and a closet with hangers ☀ Reading nook with 2 chairs and a coffee table ☀ Ceiling fan and box fan ☀ En-suite bath with tub ☀ Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash provided ☆ BEDROOM 3 ☆ ☀ KING bed ☀ Wardrobe rack ☀ Ceiling fan and box fan ☆ BEDROOM 4 ☆ ☀ KING bed ☀ Wardrobe rack ☀ Ceiling fan and box fan ☆ BEDROOM 5 ☆ ☀ Two twin over full bunk beds ☀ Wardrobe rack ☀ Ceiling fan and box fan ☆ UPSTAIRS GUEST BATH ☆ ☀ Big enough for several people to get ready at once ☀ Free standing soaking tub ☀ Separate walk-in shower ☀ Double vanity ☀ Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash provided ☆ HALF BATH ☆ ☀ Downstairs, right off the living room ☆ BATHROOM COUNT ☆ ☀ 3.5 baths total. Two are en-suites off the master bedrooms, one is the upstairs guest bath, one is the downstairs half bath ☆ TWO LAUNDRY ROOMS ☆ ☀ One downstairs off the half bath, one upstairs ☀ Stackable washer and dryer in each ☀ Wash all you want. We cover the electric, the water, and the detergent ☆ WIFI ☆ ☀ 100 mbps to 700 mbps depending on where you are in the house ☆ GUEST ACCESS ☆ Your access code arrives the day before you get here. Self check in, the whole house is yours. ☆ GUEST INTERACTION ☆ A member of Team Goswick Lane is always a message away. Airbnb messaging gets you the fastest response. Please remember this is a house, not a hotel, and treat it accordingly. If something comes up, we will move on it. ☆ WHY IT IS CALLED THE UNION ☆ Longview exists because a farmer named O.H. Methvin sold 100 acres to the railroad in 1870 for one dollar. The street outside is named after him. Three years later a second railroad came up from the south and crossed the first one a mile east of downtown. The place where they met got called Longview Junction, and for a while it was its own town with its own depot. By 1885 you could find two saloons, a gambling house, two hotels, two boarding houses, two restaurants, a drugstore, a dressmaker, and a fruit and cigar stand within a few blocks of where you are standing. A mule pulled a streetcar down Methvin between here and downtown. At the end of the line the driver unhitched the mule and walked it around to the other end so the car could go back. The crossing kept growing until it spanned eleven sets of tracks, one of the longest grade crossings in Texas, and dangerous enough that the railroad finally built an underpass in 1939 to get rid of it. In 1929 the railroad moved its division offices out and took 700 families with it. The Junction should have died right there. Instead, twenty months later, they hit oil twenty miles from here and the whole thing filled back up with a different kind of working man. This house went up in the middle of that, with nine small bedrooms upstairs and one bathroom to share between all of them. Somebody rented those rooms out by the week to men working the rigs. We counted those nine rooms before we took a wall down. We turned them into five. We added the bathrooms those men never got. We kept the bones. The 1940 depot is still standing across the tracks, the last one left in Longview and a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. Walk over and look at it. GAME ROOM LIST (look them up if you have never heard of them) Poker, Craps, Wahoo, Crokinole, Chess, Checkers, Quoridor, Ropoda, Backgammon, Longview-Opoly (Monopoly but based on our city), Concentration, Guess Who, Taboo, and a few more PS5 GAMES Fortnite, Madden 23, NBA 2K23, PGA 2K23, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, Grid Legends, Uncharted Legacy of Thieves, Astro's Playroom DISCOUNTS Message us for weekly and monthly rates, or for our military discount. Guest access Your access code will be sent the day before arrival - self-check-in. You have access to the entire property during your stay (house and back yard). Fenced parking with gate - up to 6 vehicles - feel free to park on grass Other things to note In an effort to maintain a secure premises, this house is equipped with Ring exterior cameras. These cameras are ONLY on the exterior, and there are no cameras on the inside.