Washington Hotel

The Washington Hotel in Greenville, Hunt County, Texas, is a six-story reinforced concrete building with a brick veneer and classical terra-cotta detailing, designed for mixed residential and commercial use, with retail spaces occupying the ground floor. Completed in 1926, it filled a long-standing need within the growing community of Greenville for a modern hotel and stood as a testament to the transformation of Greenville's downtown during the first decades of the twentieth century. Upon completion, the building was the tallest in Greenville and was heralded as a major milestone in the growth and development of the city. The property is nominated to the National Register in the area of Community Planning and Development at the local level. The building is also nominated in the area of Architecture, as a distinctive high-rise hotel within the downtown commercial district, designed by local architects George Lindsey and Roy Henry Kilmer and built by local contractors with locally-made products. The building's period of significance is its date of construction, 1926.

The city of Greenville was founded in 1846 as the county seat of the newly formed Hunt County.
Greenville grew slowly until the 1880s, when five major railroads the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Extensions Railway (1880), the East Line and Red River Railroad (1881), the Dallas and Greenville Railroad (1886), the St. Louis Southwestern Railway (1887) and the Texas Midland Line (1896) extended through the city and transformed it into a bustling railroad hub and cotton market.
The city's downtown developed around the courthouse square bounded by Lee Street, Johnson Street, Washington Street, and Stonewall Street. By the late 1880s, a vital commercial district had emerged along Lee Street and around the square, with drug stores, dry goods, and clothing stores, grocers, agricultural implement shops, jewelry stores, three daily newspapers, a post office, and an 800-seat opera house. At the turn of the twentieth century, Greenville was a booming cotton market town, referred to by many citizens as the "Gateway to East Texas" and the principal city of one of the richest counties of Blackland prairie in the state. In a campaign for good roads funded by Greenville merchants during the early 1910s, concrete roads were poured that led into the city from six different directions. Greenville citizens also lobbied successfully to have the Jefferson Highway, a project of the National Auto Trail system that stretched from New Orleans to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, routed through their city, further increasing traffic through Greenville's growing local business district. By the 1920s, the city boasted a population of over 12,000 people, forty-six manufacturing plants, thirty-seven wholesale houses, and 375 commercial establishments. Greenville was home to the Greenville Compress Company, which broke world records in the 1910s for a number of cotton bales compressed, and the Texas Refining Company, which was said to be the largest cotton seed oil refining plant in the world.'

As the city grew during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so did the size and prominence of its hotels. The earliest lodging places were one-story log buildings with minimal comforts, dating from the mid-1800s. In 1882, following the laying of the first railroads through the city, Fred Ende built Greenville's first brick hotel, the three-story Ende Hotel. After the Ende Hotel burned to the ground in 1883, the growing city was badly in need of a good hotel. Greenville businessmen donated a plot of land at Lee Street and Oak Street to W. L. Beckham, who constructed the three-story Beckham Hotel on the land in 1885. The hotel was so successful that it was expanded twice in the early twentieth century and rebuilt completely in the mid-1910s. Although numerous other small hotels and boarding houses operated in Greenville during the late 1800s and early 1900s-including the Madison Hotel (c. 1886), the Arcade Hotel (1887), and the Laclede Hotel (1890) the Beckham served as the city's main hotel. However, by the 1920s, the existing hotels and boarding houses were not adequate for the number of travelers passing through the city.

The push for a larger and more modern hotel for Greenville was initiated by Clifford Eugene Dinkle. Dinkle, born in Pilot Point, Texas, and raised in Greenville, was a local businessman who found success in the wholesale grocery industry and served as secretary of the Merchants Credit Association. In 1921, he was elected to represent the Fortieth District in the Texas State Legislature. While in Austin, Dinkle met with the president of the Greenville Telephone Company, C. A. Stewart, to discuss plans for a lot that the company owned at the corner of Washington and St. John Streets in downtown Greenville. Stewart planned to build a new two-story telephone exchange building on the site, but Dinkle suggested that the project be expanded to a five-story building that would also include a "modern European hotel" that would provide much-needed accommodations for travelers and would distinguish Greenville as a progressive community."

When the Greenville Telephone Exchange's plans for a new facility fell through, Stewart contacted Dinkle and offered to sell the lot if there was sufficient community support in Greenville for a new hotel building. Dinkle approached another successful Greenville businessman, J. L. Collins, to form an organization that could garner community support and funds for the project. Collins, who was born in Illinois and moved to Greenville in 1900, was president of the Collins Decker Company, a thriving wholesale piano concern. He also served as president of the Retail Merchants Association and as a member of the board of trustees for Burleson College. The Washington Hotel Company was formed with Collins as president and Dinkle as secretary. By July 31, 1924, the organization had purchased the telephone company lot and an adjacent eastern lot and was moving forward with plans for the construction of the new hotel.

The Washington Hotel Company commissioned the Greenville architectural firm of Lindsey and Kilmer to design the new hotel building. George Lindsey and Roy Henry Kilmer formed the partnership in 1918. Lindsey was a Texas native who moved to Greenville in 1895. Kilmer was born in Kansas and received a degree in architecture from Kansas State University before moving to Greenville in 1911. The firm completed many prestigious commissions in the city during the 1920s and 1930s, including the Washington Hotel (1926), the Greenville National Exchange Bank Building (1927), the Central Christian Church parsonage (1927), the President's House at 1009 Rees Street (1927, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003), the Wesley United Methodist Church (1928), and the Dr. Pepper Bottling Company plant, an Art Moderne-style factory on Washington Street (1937).

As reported in the local press, Lindsey and Kilmer's plans for the Washington Hotel caused much excitement among the citizens of Greenville. The designs for the six-story building included an enclosed roof garden that would be used for dining space and special events. On the interior, the first-floor lobby was designed with Italian marble wainscoting, decorative tinted plaster walls, coffered plaster ceilings, and tiled floors with a Greek key border. An atrium opening offered guests a view of the mezzanine balcony above. A large dining room was also planned for the northeast corner of the mezzanine level. Retail spaces on the first floor included a modern coffee shop at the southeast corner facing Washington Street, a drug store to the west of the Washington Street entrance, a Postal Telegraph office at the southwest corner of the building, and a barber shop, electrical shop, and dry cleaning business on St. John Street.

When completed, the Washington Hotel was the tallest building in the downtown and the third in a series of tall buildings that first pushed the Greenville skyline above three stories. Although the city had grown physically by leaps and bounds during the first decades of the twentieth century, most of the new buildings were still only one- or two stories tall. Greenville historian W. Walworth Harrison, writing for the Greenville Morning Herald, described the city as "loafing along as a two-story town with nobody brave enough to break the skyline. We were content to have visitors judge us, or rather, misjudge us, by our crude business section, which in no way indicated the real commercial standing of our town." It wasn't until the mid-1920s that Greenville finally began developing a skyline that reflected the city's status in the county and the region. The first tall building in the city was, fittingly, connected to the cotton industry. Set just west of the downtown, the Greenville Mill and Elevator Company Building was completed in 1925 and boasted a six-story tower that rose 100 feet into the air. That same year, a five-story office building known as the Beckham Building was completed at the corner of Lee Street and Wesley Street. The Greenville Morning Herald wryly reported that the successful completion of the Beckham building "proved that the soil of the locality would support structures more than three stories, that the rarified atmosphere above the City was not dangerous, and that elevators would run in Greenville."

The importance of the Washington Hotel's realization was displayed through the speed with which the building was constructed. In seven months, from December 1925 to the end of July 1926 the Christy-Dolph Construction Company worked tirelessly to complete the job, and the Greenville Evening Banner proclaimed that "several records in laying and pouring concrete were made" during the course of the building's construction. The plumbing and heating were installed by W. T. Monroe Company. The New Furniture Company, a local wholesale concern, supplied all of the furniture for the building, and the Graham-Fagg Company, a Greenville department store, filled the drapery contract. The building cost approximately $400,000 to complete.

The Hotel's grand opening on August 18, 1926, marked "a new epoch in the civic life of Greenville." The Greenville Morning Herald declared on the day of the grand opening, "Greenville is proud of the new Washington Hotel for it is a purely Greenville institution, conceived by local men and erected by a local stock company with funds subscribed by the people of Greenville."

The Greenville Morning Herald devoted its entire August 18th issue to the opening of the hotel, and all the advertisements in the paper featured local vendors, manufacturers, retailers, and other businesses the New Furniture Company, architects Lindsey and Kilmer, the W. T. Monroe Company, Christy-Dolph Construction Company, Red Ball Stage Lines, the Gulf Refining Company, Waples-Platter Grocer Co., the Greenville National Exchange Bank, Jones Pasteurized Milk, the Electrified Ice Company, D. Cameron Lumber Company, Averett Tire and Battery Company, jeweler G. A. Pfaeffle, the Beckham Hotel Pharmacy, and Marinello Beauty Shop all offering congratulations and good wishes to the Washington Hotel.

The Washington Hotel Company, under the leadership of J.L. Collins through the 1930s, owned and operated the hotel for thirty-eight years. In 1939, Collins constructed a Turkish bath in the basement of the hotel and hired John and Georgia Williams, experienced Turkish bath proprietors from Mineral Wells, to run the operation. In 1964, local auto dealer J. P. McNatt purchased the building and changed the name to the Cadillac Hotel. In 1983, Steve Martin of Hunt County Builders and Sabine Investments purchased the building with plans to renovate the interior for continued use as a residential hotel, but continuing maintenance issues forced residents to leave the building in 1986. After a fire in 1992, a series of failed redevelopment plans have left the building vacant and deteriorating. The current owner acquired the building in December of 2008 and is undertaking a substantial rehabilitation utilizing the federal historic rehabilitation tax credits.

The Washington Hotel is locally significant in the area of Community Planning and Development as an integral component of Greenville's development during the first half of the twentieth century and as a reflection of the city's importance to the regional economy. By the turn of the twentieth century, Greenville was a major cotton market center serving Hunt and many surrounding counties. Although several small hotels and boarding houses provided lodging to out-of-town visitors by the 1920s, the city lacked a large, modern hotel building that could adequately serve the large numbers of travelers who passed through Greenville. The new six-story fireproof Washington Hotel served to distinguish Greenville as a modern, progressive, and welcoming city that could offer accommodations equal to the largest cities in the Southwest. The building was also part of a larger plan by local businessmen and civic boosters to fill Greenville's downtown with tall, imposing structures that would reflect the city's importance as a railroad hub and a regional center for cotton processing.

The Washington Hotel is also locally significant under Criterion C for Architecture. The building is an excellent example of a three-part vertical block, a category of commercial building that was first described by architectural historian Richard Longstreth in The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture. Longstreth's classification system separates typical central and neighborhood commercial buildings into different categories based not on stylistic detailing but on the composition of the primary façade. The three-part vertical block was first developed during the late nineteenth century "as a means of simplifying the external composition of tall commercial buildings." The composition of a three-part vertical block features three distinct zones, analogous to the divisions of a classical column. A one-to-two-story base visually grounds the building; a middle zone, or shaft, comprises the majority of the building's facade and is generally the least decorated, and an ornamented upper zone, or capital, of one to three stories. The Washington Hotel exhibits all of these distinguishing features, with its red-brick storefront base, ochre-colored brick shaft, and capital with simple Classical Revival detailing including a projecting molded terra-cotta cornice, terra cotta medallions with alternating floral swag and wreath details, and abstracted geometric pilasters between window openings. In Greenville, where the majority of the downtown commercial buildings are simple one- and two-part commercial blocks, the Washington Hotel serves as a focal point of the central business district.

The building also exemplifies the type of mid-rise commercial hotels that were being constructed in towns and cities across the country during the late 1800s and early 1900s, as railroads and highway systems connected far-flung areas of the United States and once rural enclaves became booming railroad hubs with thriving commercial districts. By the turn of the century, hotels served not only as lodging for travelers but as important public spaces for the local community.

Ground floor commercial spaces provided additional income for the building owner but also brought residents into the building daily. Spacious and well-appointed parlors, dining rooms, and meeting spaces on the lower floors served not only the hotel guests but were also utilized by local citizens for weddings, cotillions, business meetings and conventions, and other important social events. Private hotel rooms and suites were located on the upper floors, opening off of an efficient floor plan of double-loaded corridors. The Washington Hotel featured this same hierarchy of interior spaces. Commercial storefronts opened onto the street and directly into the lavishly-detailed lobby. The large second-floor dining room and enclosed rooftop garden were designed to accommodate larger parties. The upper floors feature U- shaped double-loaded corridors lined with hotel rooms and residential apartment suites. As with most hotels, the Washington Hotel featured the most modern household technologies, including baths with tubs and showers in all rooms and telephones on each floor.

Washington Hotel Lofts LLC of Winston-Salem, NC, acquired the building in December of 2008 and is undertaking a substantial rehabilitation utilizing the federal historic rehabilitation tax credits. Part 1 of the tax credit application was approved by the NPS in March 2010.