Mills Building

The land upon which much of downtown El Paso, Texas, sits today once was owned by Juan María Ponce de León, a wealthy merchant of El Paso del Norte (present-day Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico) and came to be known as the Ponce de León Ranch. He petitioned the Spanish government in January 1827 for approximately 215 acres of mud flats on the north bank of the Rio Grande; upon the grant's approval in September 1827, Ponce de León began to improve the property with the construction of an irrigation ditch, and he planted corn, grapes, and wheat. In 1849 he sold his ranch to Benjamin Franklin Coons, and the property became known as Coon's Rancho.

Coons was unable to keep up with his payments on the land, however, and Ponce de León repossessed the property in 1851. After his death the following year, his heirs sold the land to William T. Smith, a freighter. Smith, in turn, sold the property in 1859 to a partnership of four men including J.F. Crosby, Joseph Magoffin, and brothers William W. Mills and Anson Mills. Partitioning of a portion of this property to Magoffin and a buy-out of W. W. Mills left Anson Mills and Crosby as the last remaining partners.

In 1883, Mills and Crosby constructed the Grand Central Hotel on the site where the Mills Building now stands. The hotel building was destroyed by fire in 1896, and Mills then bought Crosby's interest in the lot three years later. In 1899 Mills constructed a new two-story hotel on the site and named it the Mills Building; this building would stand only ten years before Mills ordered that it be demolished to make room for the building that is the subject of this nomination.

The second Mills Building, the subject of this nomination, was designed by the local architecture firm of Trost & Trost and constructed by the H.L. Stevens Construction Company of Atlanta and Houston; begun in 1909, the eight-story building was completed in 1911. To celebrate the construction of the imposing concrete building and to honor the contributions of Anson Mills to the community, the city of El Paso decided in 1910 to rename Saint Louis Street as Mills Street.2 Four more floors were added to the building in 1915 so that the Mills Building totaled twelve stories as originally designed by Trost & Trost. The building remained in the Mills family until 1965.

In 2006, Mills Plaza Properties, L.P., purchased the building from the El Paso Electric Company, and in 2008 the rehabilitation of the historic building began. All extant features dating to its completion in 1915 were retained and restored to keep with the general character of the building. An additional wing was added to the building to increase its floor area by 20,000 square feet.

The Mills Building is locally significant under Criterion C in the areas of Architecture and Engineering, as the work of El Paso-based architects Trost & Trost, and for its status, at the time of its completion in 1915, as the tallest and largest commercial building of monolithic reinforced concrete in the United States, and only the second tall building in the nation to be constructed using this method.

It is also locally significant under Criterion B in the area of Community Planning and Development for its association with General Anson Mills, who surveyed and platted the city of El Paso and built one of its most noteworthy edifices.