Four stories of brick with an elaborately decorated Victorian front facade, the Capital Hotel at 111 West Markham Street in Little Rock, Arkansas, still anchors this stretch of the city. Imagine the moment when it opened in 1876 — the grandest hotel in the city — and picture why residents still point to it as a local landmark. At street level the window bays are articulated by Corinthian pilasters; your eye will be drawn to their capitals and the rhythm they set along the sidewalk.
Look up to the tall second- and third-floor windows set in round-arch openings, where Ionic pilasters stand between the arches and add a lighter, elegant verticality. Above them the fourth-floor windows sit in segmented-arch openings, accompanied by smaller Corinthian pilasters that crown the composition. The building’s civic significance has been recognized: it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and inducted into Historic Hotels of America — the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation — in 2009.
Picture Corinthian and Ionic pilasters stacking upward past round-arch windows, a rhythm recognized in 1974 and again in 2009 by Historic Hotels of America.