815 Main Street [NR/RTHL/Sky(NR)], Hotel Texas/Sheraton-Fort Worth/Hyatt Regency Fort Worth, 1920-21; 1961; 1979-81. Fort Worth’s first great hotel from the oil boom years, the Hotel Texas was completed at a cost of $4 million. On the occasion of its grand opening on September 30, 1921, the Fort Worth Star Telegram referred to the hotel as a “resplendent palace.” In 1919, a coalition of twenty-seven of the city’s most prominent leaders – Amon G. Carter, Sr., William Monnig, and W.K. Stripling among them-formed the Citizens Hotel Company to build a first- class hotel for the Fort Worth. Fort Worth’s premier architectural firm, Sanguinet and Staats, designed the building in a style reminiscent of their 1913-14 Burk Burnett Building (CBD 117), with its rich terra cotta ornamentation applied to the ground floor and upper story, and a dark brick shaft between. To convey the formal elegant style of a luxury hotel, the architects derived the detailing from eighteenth-century English sources. Mauran, Russell and Crowell, the St. Louis firm that participated in several other Fort Worth projects about this time (see CBD 119 and 121) served as associate architects for the project. The building was built by the Westlake Construction Co. Deed records indicate that the Citizens Hotel Company arranged for a local firm, Tarrant Construction Co., to erect the structure, but a series of construction photographs clearly identify Westlake Construction Co. as the actual contractor. The hotel operated successfully for several decades with minor alterations and remodelings. In 1961 a Grand Ballroom was added to the north side of the building. President John F. Kennedy spent his last night in the Hotel Texas’ Suite 805 and delivered his last address at the hotel on November 22, 1963, the day he was assassinated in Dallas. In 1967 the hotel’s owners contracted with the Sheraton Corporation to manage the hotel, and in 1970 its name was changed to Sheraton-Fort Worth. The hotel did not prosper, and in 1978 it finally closed. Woodbine Development Corporation optioned the property in 1979 and began plans to convert it to the Hyatt Regency Fort Worth. J.P.J. Architects, Inc. of Dallas drew plans for the renovation project which included replacement of original windows on the fourth through fourteenth floors, construction of a double-vaulted entrance canopy, and a complete reconstruction of the hotel’s interior. HCB Contractors of Dallas was the general contractor for the project. The Hotel Texas was listed on the National Register in 1979 and designated as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1982. It is also a contributor to the proposed Downtown Skyscrapers National Register Thematic Group.