Built 1912 Added to NRHP January 5, 1979 | NRHP Reference # 79002933 | |
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Location 115 El Paso St
El Paso, Texas MPS Commercial Structures of El Paso by Henry C. Trost TR | ||
Hotel Paso del Norte is a historic hotel located in El Paso, Texas, United States less than one mile north from the international border with Mexico. The hotel was designed by Trost & Trost and opened in 1912. The hotel was extensively remodeled in 2004 and renamed the Camino Real El Paso Hotel. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 5, 1979.
Camino Real El Paso is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Zack T. White, a wealthy El Paso businessman, financed construction of the hotel. After witnessing a fire destroy another hotel in El Paso, White and architect Henry Charles Trost traveled to San Francisco, California to try to understand how some buildings there survived the earthquake and fire in 1906. The hotel cost $1.5 million to build in order to make it one of the sturdiest structures in El Paso and the most ornate. The large hotel lobby features a stained glass dome over twenty-five feet in diameter designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
During the Mexican Revolution, it was popular to watch firefights between the revolutionaries and the Mexican Army from the terrace on the top of the hotel. Some of the notable people who stayed at the hotel include Gloria Swanson, General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, General Alvaro Obregon, John Reed (journalist), Will Rogers, Enrico Caruso, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, the then Vice President Richard Nixon.
On February 1, 1971, the hotel was sold by the daughter of Zach White to the T. G. K. Investment Company. The Paso del Norte Hotel Corporation acquired the hotel in February 1975 and then transferred ownership to Z. W. Limited. The Paso del Norte Hotel Corporation remains as a general partner of Z. W. Limited. A 17-story addition was constructed in 1986 on the north side of the hotel. The hotel now has 359 rooms and is still in use. The Mexican Camino Real Hotels sold this hotel to the Meyers Group, a group of local investors in October 2016.