National Register Listing

Rice Hotel

Main St. and Texas Ave., Houston, TX

The Rice Hotel, one of the most advanced and best-known Texas hotels since its opening in 1913, stands on a site occupied from 1837-39 by the first Capitol of the Republic of Texas. Since 1841, the property has been used exclusively for hotels, with the exception of a brief period in 1842 when it was again the site of the Texas Capitol. The history of the site and the present Rice Hotel has been both long and colorful and has become an inextricable part of the history of Texas and of Houston.

When the second session of the first Congress of the Republic of Texas met in Columbia in 1836, office and housing facilities were found to be so inadequate that officials decided to move the capital to Houston and appropriated $15,000 for the construction of Congressional buildings there. The new Capitol was to be completed for the Legislature by April 1, 1837, but as most of the materials had to be shipped to the newly surveyed city, members of Congress were forced to begin their deliberations in unfinished surroundings. Once completed, however, the Capitol became a center of civic, political, and religious activities until Houston was abandoned by the Legislature in favor of Austin on September 10, 1839. Ownership of the old Capitol building was retained by John K. and Augustus C. Allen, founders of the city of Houston and among those most instrumental in the selection of the city as the capital of Texas. The building continued to be used for public functions until late 1841 when it was leased to N. Norwood who opened it as a "house of entertainment, a popular term for hotels at that time. Following the Mexican invasion of 1842, the "Capitol Hotel" again became the Capitol building when President Sam Houston moved the capital back to the city of Houston from March to September of that year. Afterward, the building continued to be operated as a hotel. Later known as the "Houston House," it remained in the ownership of the Allen family until June 27, 1857, at which time Mrs. Charlotte M. Allen sold the property to R. S. Blount for $12,000. It had become one of Houston's "favorite hotels" by the end of 1856, and by 1877, the establishment, renamed the "Barnes House," was enjoying a statewide reputation as a result of its swashbuckling caterer, Peter Louiselle. The old Capitol was razed in May 1881, by Col. A. Groesbeck, who had purchased the site and who subsequently erected the elaborate five-story brick and stucco "Capitol Hotel," which became a center of social and civic life in Houston. Six months after Groesbeck's death in 1886, William Marsh Rice, who was later responsible for the founding and endowment of Rice University, bought the Capitol Hotel for taxes and added a five-story annex, renaming the building the "Rice Hotel." William Marsh Rice died in 1900, leaving the property to Rice University, but the hotel continued to be operated until 1911, when Jesse H. Jones, a young Houston entrepreneur, purchased the building and leased the property from the school. The building was demolished, and on February 12, 1912, Jones obtained a permit to erect a seventeen-story structure on the site; that structure is the major portion of the present Rice Hotel and was officially opened on May 17, 1913. A pre-opening banquet, held at the Rice on May 16 by the recently formed Rotary Club of Houston, was attended by 593 men and was reported the following day to have been "the most elaborate banquet in the city's history."

The original promotional brochure proclaimed its title page the following:

The Rice Hotel

Main Street & Texas Avenue

Houston, Texas

A Modern Fireproof Hotel Costing 

Two and One-Half Million Dollars 

Built by Houston Capital 

Under the Leadership of 

Jesse H. Jones 

1912

Jesse Jones was indeed a leader. Born in Tennessee, Jones was a financial wizard who built not only the Rice Hotel but also many of the commercial buildings that surround it. In 1932, Jones was appointed to head the Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation and subsequently served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime Secretary of Commerce. Until his death in 1956, Jones was heavily involved in the promotion and development of Houston, and his many contributions to the city and to the State of Texas remain legendary in scope.

The 1912-13 building, itself, was a landmark. Designed by the St. Louis architectural firm of Mauran, Russell, and Crowell, the Rice Hotel was one of the first two multi-story buildings in Houston constructed with skeletal steel or cast iron frame carrying the weight of walls, floors, and ceilings. The handsomely finished structure ex- cited such public interest that a crowd of some 10,000 persons toured the building on the day of its official opening.

Continued improvement of the hotel's facilities and services over the following years is exemplified by the Rice Hotel Cafeteria, which opened in 1922 as the first air-conditioned public room in Houston; its expansion in 1924 made it the largest hotel cafeteria in the United States; and by the 1970s, Rice promotional brochures were billing the room, with its capacity of 840 persons, as the largest hotel cafeteria in the world.

In 1921, Jesse Jones retained Alfred C. Finn, a Houston architect, to design alterations for Jones' seventeenth-floor apartment at the Rice. This was Finn's first work on the hotel, and his association with Jones continued over a period of many years. In 1925-26, the Rice was enlarged according to Finn's design to a capacity of 1000 guest rooms and suites by the addition of a west wing. Both the scale of the wing and its detail matched the earlier portion of the structure, and it was this addition that gave the hotel its distinctive E-shape. During the course of this project, the cast iron canopy was carefully extended with ironwork produced at the Herzog Iron Works of St. Paul, Minnesota; terra cotta trim for the wing was provided by the Atlanta Terra Cotta of East Point, Georgia. The importance of Finn's involvement with Rice can be more fully appreciated by examining his remarkable career. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he was born in Bellville, Texas, in 1874, the son of a blacksmith.
Without the benefit of college education, he trained for the profession with the firm of Sanguinet and Staats of Dallas, where he came under the personal tutelage of Charles D. Staats, considered at the time to be one of the finest architects of the Southwest. Finn opened his own office in Houston in 1913, and from that time exerted a powerful influence on the architecture of the city of Houston. In addition to the west wing of the Rice, local buildings he designed included the San Jacinto Monument, the Gulf Building, the Shrine Crippled Children's Hospital in the Texas Medical Center, the Ezekiel Cullen Building at the University of Houston, St. Paul's Methodist Church, the U. S. Naval Hospital, the Sakowitz Building, and the City National Bank Building. In 1928, the Democratic National Convention was held in Houston, having been induced there by a $200,000 contribution from Jesse Jones, and City tax records indicate that the hotel may have altered some of its rooms in order to increase accommodations for the delegates, most of whom made their headquarters at the Rice. It is known that Jesse Jones had a shed built on the hotel roof to be used as a bunkhouse during the convention, and although built as a temporary structure, this bunk- house became, during the Depression, part of the famous "Top Deck of the Rice," the most popular dance spot in the city. It is of interest that during the convention, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who nominated Al Smith for the Presidency, was a guest in the hotel. Also of interest are two memorable incidents of local color, if not history, which occurred at the time: an irate cattleman emptied his pistol into the door and shaft of an elevator after the crowded car had passed him by once too often, and a female rodeo star rode her horse up the staircase to the mezzanine and hitched it to a large potted plant while she went to the powder room.

During the next decade, many other things added to the character of Rice. The famed Rice Hotel Barber Shop was opened in 1930 and became during its forty-seven-year tenure in the same location something of an institution in its own right. In 1935, the Crystal Ballroom became the first ballroom in Houston to be air-conditioned, measurably increasing its popularity. One of the most unusual events at the hotel during the 1930s was the 1936 meeting of the Texas Cattlemen's Association. Some 600 cattlemen, many of them carrying guns, turned the fashionable Crystal Ballroom into an air-conditioned "chuck wagon," roped downtown shoppers from the hotel balcony, and held a square dance in the lobby. In May of that same year, more than 1400 persons, the largest crowd in the Hotel's history, filled the "Top Deck of the Rice" to hear Gus Arnheim and his orchestra. Other famous bands which played on the popular Rice Roof Garden, as it was later called, included Freddy Martin, Ted Weems (with singer Perry Como), and Lawrence Welk. Such events and associations have afforded Houstonians much entertainment and activity over the years and developed within them the strong and somewhat remarkable devotion that now exists for Rice.
Major interior remodelings of the lower floors of the hotel in 1938 and 1940 resulted in a number of changes, the most notable of which were the development of the Empire Room, a large dining room of art deco design, and the covering of the lobby to enable expansion of the mezzanine. During the 1940 remodeling, the Rice became the first hotel in Houston to make major use of fluorescent lighting and plastic upholstery, which were introduced when the coffee shop was converted to the "Skyline Room." In January 1942, the "Roof Garden of the Rice" closed in response to the blackout imposed during World War II and never reopened. Following the war, the hotel continued to expand. In 1946, the Rice became the first hotel in Houston to provide an escalator for its guests, and by 1947 the entire hotel had been air-conditioned.

The eighteenth floor was added to the Rice in 1951. Designed by the Houston architectural firm of Staub and Rather, the steel, glass, and masonry addition was occupied by the Petroleum Club of Houston until the early 1960s and has remained virtually unaltered since its construction. John Staub, of Staub and Rather, has, like Finn, exerted considerable influence on Houston architecture. A Tennessean by birth, Staub was trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and first came to Houston to open an office for Harrie T. Lindeberg, a New York architect. Staub remained in Houston and became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a man best known for his residential designs. In addition to the eighteenth floor of the Rice Hotel, his commissions have included Bayou Bend (the former home of Miss Ima Hogg and today a museum) and the River Oaks Country Club.

Following the death of Jesse Jones in 1956, the Rice Hotel became the property of The Houston Endowment, Inc., a philanthropic foundation established by Jones, which continued to operate and to remodel the hotel. In 1957, the Empire Room was converted into the Old Capitol Club and the Flag Room, both of which remained in use until the closing of the Rice twenty years later. In 1958-59, a $3,000,000. five-story, concrete and masonry annex designed by Houston architect J. Russ Baty was added to the rear of the hotel; this final addition which housed, among other facilities, an air-conditioned motor lobby and the immense Grand Ballroom, was officially opened on April 18, 1959. It is of interest that Baty at one time worked in the office of Alfred C. Finn. The last major interior work undertaken by the Endowment was an $8 million modernization program begun in 1961 and involving, to varying degrees, most areas of the hotel. This included a $175,000 lobby remodeling, which was designed by Richard Kent, Inc., of New York; J. Russ Baty was the architect.

On August 21, 1962, the seventh Mercury-Atlas Mission Conference of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Manned Spacecraft Center was conducted in the new Grand Ballroom and featured the Pilot's Flight Report of M. Scott Carpenter. Guests in the hotel included all of the United States' original astronauts and others responsible for the development of the space program. Other events during the 1960s included visits by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 and 1963, a major policy address by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963, and ceremonies held on January 10, 1964, officially dedicating the Sam Houston $.05 Commemorative Postage Stamp. For the first day of issue sale of the stamps, a "Republic of Texas Capitol Station" was established in the hotel.

In 1971, the Rice Hotel was donated by the Houston Endowment to Rice University, owner of the land on which the building stood. The University continued to operate the hotel until 1975 when it closed the facility rather than comply with a new Houston fire code and announced plans to sell or demolish the building.

The closing of the hotel by Rice University was observed by hundreds of Houstonians who crowded into a Last Dance" at the Rice. The evening included dancing and cocktails on the glass-enclosed eighteenth floor that was once the Rice Roof and later the Petroleum Club, and afterward dinner and more dancing in the Crystal Ballroom. Tickets were $150 per couple or $1000 for a table, and proceeds were given to the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston.

Demolition seemed inevitable until, at the last minute, Rittenhouse Capital Corporation of New York agreed to purchase the Rice. After a major refurbishing program, the Rice reopened in April 1976, as the Rice Rittenhouse Hotel but was closed by court order the following year and was sold at a foreclosure auction in September 1977. In March of 1978, Rice Preservation Corporation, which bought the Hotel and Lease at auction, sold the property to Community Investors IX, Ltd. Simultaneously, with its acquisition of the building, Community Investors IX, Ltd. purchased the land from its owner, Rice University, and plans reuse of the building.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1978.