Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel, a historic building in downtown Des Moines, is where you have stopped. This is the third hotel in the city to bear the Savery name and the second to stand on this site. The prominent Chicago hotel design firm H.L. Stevens & Company designed this 233-room hotel in the Colonial Revival style, a rare choice for commercial architecture here, and the eleven-story brick building rises 140 feet above the ground.
It opened in 1919 and later received additions completed in 1952 and 1953. Look across the alley to the west: an annex, completed circa 1899, served the earlier hotel on this lot. During World War II, when Des Moines hosted the first Women's Army Auxiliary Corps training center, the Savery augmented Fort Des Moines by serving as an induction center, barracks, mess hall, and classrooms from 1942 to 1945.
Famous visitors have stayed in these rooms, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President Harry S. Truman, and actress Carol Channing, who insisted on a window she could open for fresh air before she would stay here. Notice the brick façade rising above you, and the 1899 annex waiting just across the alley to the west.