Rugby's first hotel, the Tabard Inn, stood facing the Clear Fork River and was designed by Boston architect George Fuller and completed in 1880 in time for the colony's October 5 opening day. Named for the Southwark hostelry from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it resembled an English club, with a dining room, billiard tables in the gentlemen's parlor, tennis and croquet on the lawn, a three-story form with mansard roof and dormer windows, and spacious ornamented verandahs on two floors overlooking the mountains and a bend in the river below. It was promoted in American and English cities for its mountain air, spring and well water, fishing, concerts, boating, bathing, and refined society, and early Rugby newspapers recorded activities there and guests from many American cities and states as well as several foreign countries. In the summer of 1881, the hotel and colony suffered a major crisis when typhoid fever broke out from a contaminated cistern near the Tabard, killing seven young Englishmen and sickening many more residents, and the hotel closed before reopening on December 1, 1881 after renovation and a proper water supply were provided. The Tabard was probably profitable only during Abner Ross's tenure, when his fine dining room and hospitality became well known. On October 16, 1884, when the Rugby colony seemed to be flourishing, the Tabard caught fire and burned to the ground, though colonists led by Robert Walton carried many furnishings out of the building. A second Tabard hotel in Queen Anne style was completed in 1887, but it was never a financial success and it too burned in 1899.