H.L. Stevens & Company was a Chicago-, New York-, and San Francisco-based architectural firm that designed hotels around the United States. At least 15 of its works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places for their architecture.
The firm specialized in small (less than 500 rooms) hotels and apartment houses in a Georgian Revival or Colonial Revival style in either a rectangular or H-shape, which in at least one case was viewed as a refreshing change from the small, squarish hotels that a city had previously experienced. Their buildings, primarily in the Northeast, are in many cases still extant.
In 1912, there was some dispute surrounding the State of Illinois's approval of the firm as an architectural firm, because, as a corporation, it appeared incorrect to allow the designation of the corporation as a licensed architect.
The firm developed hospitals during World War I. During that time, it created an integrated approach to design and construction that would be termed "fast-tracking" today; it applied this approach to its development of hotels starting with the Penn Alto Hotel.
Works include (with attribution that varies in punctuation):
Burritt Hotel, 67 W. Main St., New Britain, Connecticut, (Stevens,H. L.,Company), NRHP-listedHotel Ashtabula, 4726 Main Ave., Ashtabula, Ohio, (Stevens,H.L., & Co.), NRHP-listedHotel Bothwell, 103 E. Fourth St., Sedalia, Missouri, (Stevens,H.L.,Co.), NRHP-listedHotel Capital, 139 N. 11th St., Lincoln, Nebraska, (Stevens,H. L.,& Co.), NRHP-listedHotel Kirkwood, 400 4th St. (400 Walnut St.), Des Moines, Iowa, (Stevens, H.L., and Company), NRHP-listedHotel Norfolk (Norfolk, Nebraska), 108 N. Fourth St., Norfolk, Nebraska, (Stevens,H.L.,Co.), NRHP-listedHotel Randolph, 200-204 4th St., Des Moines, Iowa, (Stevens, H.L. Co.), NRHP-listedHotel Van Curler, built 1925, 78 Washington Ave., Schenectady, New York, (Stevens,H. L.,and Company), NRHP-listedIowana Hotel, 203 W. Montgomery St., Creston, Iowa, (Stevens, H.L. & Co.), NRHP-listedLeopold Hotel, 1224 Cornwall Ave., Bellingham, Washington, (Stevens,H.L.,Co.), NRHP-listedOnesto Hotel, 2nd and Cleveland, NW, Canton, Ohio, (Stevenson,H.L.), NRHP-listedParke Apartments, 33 Gates Circle, Buffalo, New York, (Stevens, H.L. & Co.), NRHP-listedPenn Alto Hotel, 12th St. and 13th Ave., Altoona, Pennsylvania, (Stevens,H.L.,Co.), NRHP-listedSavery Hotel, 401 Locust St., Des Moines, Iowa, (Stevens, H.L. & Co.), NRHP-listedStonewall Jackson Hotel, 24 S. Market St., Staunton, Virginia.One or more works in Downtown Birmingham Historic District, boundary increase II: roughly along 23rd St. and 3rd Ave., bounded by 5th Ave., 22nd St., and 2nd Ave., Birmingham, Alabama, (Stevens, H.L.), NRHP-listed
