Blackstone Hotel
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first Art Deco skyscraper in Fort Worth, the Blackstone Hotel was erected in 1929 for wealthy cattleman C. A. "Gus" O'Keefe, who named it after a visit to the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. The St. Louis architectural firm of Mauran, Russell, and Crowell designed the structure. The city's first radio station, WBAP, once occupied the 22nd floor. A five-story annex was added in the 1950s by the Hilton Hotel chain, which occupied the building from 1952 to 1962. Featuring original sash windows, irregular setbacks, and ornamental terra cotta detailing, the Blackstone Hotel remains the city's tallest pre-World War II structure. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1998
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When it rose in 1929, the Blackstone Hotel gave Fort Worth its first Art Deco skyscraper, built for cattleman C. A. "Gus" O'Keefe, who named it after a Chicago hotel he admired. The St. Louis firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell dressed it in irregular setbacks and ornamental terra cotta, and the city's first radio station, WBAP, once broadcast from its 22nd floor. The Hilton chain ran the hotel in the 1950s and added an annex, but the Blackstone remains Fort Worth's tallest pre-World War II building.
Why it matters
The Blackstone captures the confidence of the late-1920s boom, when cattle-and-oil wealth reached skyward in the Art Deco style just before the Depression.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The late 1920s were a time of soaring confidence in America, and Fort Worth was riding a wave of cattle-and-oil prosperity. Money made on the range and in the oil fields was flowing into the city, and that wealth wanted to announce itself — in bank buildings, hotels, and the newest architectural fashion of the age: Art Deco, with its bold geometry, stepped setbacks, and ornamental flourishes.
This was the era of the American skyscraper boom, when cities across the country raced upward and a tall building became a symbol of a city's ambition. Fort Worth had not yet had its own Art Deco tower — until this hotel rose in 1929, giving the city its first, right on the eve of a decade that would change everything.
The timing is part of the story. The Blackstone went up in the final, glittering months before the Great Depression, a monument to a boom that was about to end. Its confident lines and rich detailing froze that moment of optimism in stone and terra cotta.
People & events
The hotel was the vision of a wealthy cattleman, C. A. "Gus" O'Keefe, and there's a touch of personal romance in how it got its name. O'Keefe had visited the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago and admired it enough to bring the name home to Fort Worth for his own grand hotel — a small, human detail that connects a Texas landmark to a famous Midwestern one.
To design it, O'Keefe turned to the St. Louis architectural firm of Mauran, Russell, and Crowell, who gave the building its Art Deco character: irregular setbacks that step the tower back as it rises, ornamental terra cotta detailing, and the original sash windows that still mark its face.
The Blackstone became woven into the city's public life in ways beyond lodging. Fort Worth's first radio station, WBAP, once occupied the twenty-second floor, broadcasting from near the top of the city's newest tower. In the 1950s the building entered a new chapter when the Hilton Hotel chain took it over, running it from 1952 to 1962 and adding a five-story annex — a sign of how a landmark adapts as ownership and the hospitality business change around it.
Its place in the American story
The Blackstone is a vivid example of how Art Deco swept across America in the 1920s, reshaping skylines from the biggest cities to regional hubs like Fort Worth. The style's stepped setbacks weren't only aesthetic; they echoed a broader national moment when cities were literally reaching upward and codifying how tall buildings should meet the sky. To see Art Deco arrive in Fort Worth is to see a national design language taking root in Texas soil.
The presence of WBAP high in the tower connects the building to another transformative national story: the birth of commercial radio. In the 1920s, radio stations were knitting the country together with news, music, and a shared sense of the moment, and it's fitting that a young station broadcast from near the top of a city's proudest new structure.
That the Blackstone remains Fort Worth's tallest pre–World War II building gives it a special standing. It marks a high-water line — the tallest the city built before the Depression and the war reset the nation's priorities — and stands as a survivor of the exuberant age that produced it.
If you visit
Approach the Blackstone the way it was meant to be seen: from the street, looking up. Watch how the tower steps back in irregular setbacks as it climbs, and let your eye catch the ornamental terra cotta detailing that dresses an otherwise soaring form. The original sash windows are part of what makes it read as authentically of its era.
Knowing the building's past deepens the view. Picture the city's first radio station broadcasting from the twenty-second floor, and the Hilton era of the 1950s that added the annex you can still pick out against the older tower. Each layer is a chapter in a single downtown landmark.
As the tallest thing Fort Worth built before World War II, the Blackstone anchors a downtown architecture walk beautifully. Combine it with the city's other early-twentieth-century commercial buildings and you can trace, block by block, the confident age of cattle and oil that reached for the sky in the Art Deco style — just before the Depression changed the story.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · C. A. "Gus" O'Keefe
Themes & tags
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