The Jackson Hotel at 139 West Peoria Street is one of Paola's better-preserved 19th-century commercial buildings. Built in the 1880s as a travellers' hotel during the railroad era, the three-storey brick block has a classic Italianate front — round-headed windows, an ornamental cornice, an arched recessed entry — and was carefully restored in the 1990s after years of neglect.
It no longer operates as a hotel; the upper floors are apartments and the ground floor has been variously a bar, a real-estate office, and a small retail space. From the street the building remains a fine example of the kind of commercial architecture that defined small Kansas towns at their late-19th-century peak. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places.