- Neighborhood
- Downtown
- Year built
- 1913
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- Era
- Early 20th Century
- Architect
- Mauran, Russell & Crowell
- Designations
- National Register of Historic Places · City of Houston Landmark
Significance
Built in 1913 on the site of the former Capitol of the Republic of Texas at Texas Avenue and Main Street, the 17-story Rice Hotel replaced an earlier 1881 hotel of the same name and became Houston's premier gathering place for business and society for half a century. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style by the St. Louis firm Mauran, Russell and Crowell, it featured a grand lobby, roof garden, and ballrooms that hosted political conventions, debutante balls, and touring dignitaries. Its most famous night came on November 21, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy addressed the Houston Pilots Association there, only hours before his assassination in Dallas the next day. The hotel closed in 1977 and stood vacant for two decades before a 1998 adaptive reuse converted it into loft apartments and ground floor retail, making it one of the earliest and most visible successes of downtown Houston's residential revitalization movement.
Climate risks tracked
The Rice Hotel's steel frame and masonry curtain wall have weathered decades of Gulf Coast hurricanes, but its below grade mechanical spaces and ground floor retail sit close to street level in a part of downtown that has flooded repeatedly, including during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Sustained hurricane force winds, like those from Ike in 2008, stress older window assemblies and roof parapets on its upper floors. Houston's humid subtropical climate and downtown urban heat island effect also drive persistent moisture infiltration into masonry joints and historic plaster, encouraging mold growth inside converted residential units unless mechanical systems are continuously run.
Use the preservation assistant to talk through retrofit strategies for these specific threats.
Location
Nearby landmarks
Preservation Assistant
Grounded in Rice Hotel