51The Inn Wearing Wallpaper Outside
Designed and painted by local students — Natalie Ward’s current and former students, some of them now working Waco artists — with Natalie Ward as project manager, finished in 2026 · on the Gloria Inn & Cottages building at 603 S 9th St, at S 9th & Clay, owned by Robert and Wendy Owen, who opened the wall to the students · credited by Natalie Ward, who reached out to usMURAL
A blush-pink wall so elegant it makes the parking lot feel underdressed — and the kids painted it.
At the quiet end of the stroll, a boutique inn two blocks off the Silos wrapped its street wall in blush pink and big, poster-flat botanicals: blue blossoms the size of hubcaps with pale centers, coral fan-shaped leaves drawn in nothing but fine lines, dark green foliage slipping behind them, and in the middle a forest-green panel with Gloria Inn & Cottages in white script under two gooseneck lamps. It looks like the kind of hand-painted pattern you would expect inside a Parisian stairwell, except it is outside, on Clay Avenue, being lovely at pickup trucks.
Here is who did it. The wall was designed and painted by local students — Natalie Ward’s current and former students, several of whom have gone on to become working Waco artists — with Ward managing the project. Robert and Wendy Owen, who own the building, opened the wall up to them, and the students left their mark on the neighborhood in 2026. Ward reached out to us herself to make sure they got the credit.
The inn decided its wall should be beautiful from the sidewalk, for people who will never book a room, and then handed the brush to kids. That is a small radical act, and it is the whole idea of this trail in miniature: art that faces out. The eight-suite inn and its cottages fill up with Silos pilgrims — but the wall works for free, for everyone, every day.