Less than a mile north of the international border with Mexico, Hotel Paso del Norte and its 351 rooms rise in front of you. From this spot you can sense why a wealthy El Paso businessman, Zack T. White, poured resources into its construction: after watching a fire destroy another hotel, White and architect Henry Charles Trost even traveled to San Francisco to learn how some buildings had survived the 1906 earthquake and fire. Opened on Thanksgiving Day 1912 and designed by Trost & Trost, the hotel cost $1.5 million to build so it would be among the sturdiest — and the most ornate — structures in the city.
Step inside or imagine the grand lobby, dominated by a stained glass dome over forty-five feet in diameter, executed in the Tiffany glass style. The building’s significance was recognized when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 5, 1979. In 2018 it closed for a substantial renovation and restoration, reopening on October 8, 2020 as part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection.
Picture the 1914 Mexican Revolution, when people watched firefights from these very roof terraces beneath the stained glass dome overhead.