Hilton Hotel

About this property

The Hotel Indigo Dallas Downtown is a historic hotel opened in 1925 as the Hilton Hotel, located at the corner of Main Street and S. Harwood Street in downtown Dallas, Texas (United States). The hotel is a contributing property in the Harwood Street Historic District and Main Street District. It is also located across the street from Main Street Garden Park. The Hilton Hotel, built by Conrad Hilton, was his first hotel to bear the "Hilton" name. Conrad Hilton operated one of the two earliest hotel chains in the state, and went on to become a world leading hotel operator, with an international chain of hotels and resorts. Unlike his earlier hotels, which were bought and renovated but not built by Conrad Hilton himself, the new hotel in Dallas was designed by Hilton from the ground up to be a prominent high rise hotel. For the building site Hilton chose the highest point in downtown Dallas. Hilton retained the prominent architectural firm of Lang and Witchell, one of the two most respected firms in Dallas, to design the new hotel. They designed the hotel as a 14-story, reinforced concrete and masonry structure in a simplified Sullivanesque style with symmetrical facades and Beaux Arts detailing. Its horseshoe plan is similar to that of the Magnolia Building and features two massive towers projecting toward Harwood Street which form an open court. The towers were tied together on the main (Harwood) facade with a frontispiece entrance and an elaborate bridge at the tenth level. Ground was broken on July 25, 1924 and the building was completed just over one year later for a total cost of $1.36 million—Hilton's second most costly Texas highrise. The hotel officially opened on Thursday, August 6, 1925. Hilton maximized all available space in the public areas of the hotel for an assortment of vending services. The presence of the druggist, men's shop, barber shop, valet service, beauty shop, coffee shop, tailor, cigar/news stand, telegraph office, dining room and others dovetailed with Hilton's emphasis on service while the rents those services paid supplemented the finances of the operation. Not wanting to tie up capital in land ownership, Hilton introduced the idea of a 99-year land lease with the Dallas property. The concept was well known in the East in 1925, but it was new to Texas commerce circles. Hilton's private offices were also located on the mezzanine level as were seven sample rooms with Murphy wall beds. The 325 guest rooms were typically small and were painted in colors of pearl gray and cream. The rooms and corridors were carpeted. Most had full baths, and the rest had half baths. Seventy-five percent of the rooms had south or east exposure for maximum ventilation; no rooms were located on the west.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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