Albert Pike Hotel

In the 1920s such Mediterranean elements as arcades, exposed beams, red tile roofs, and terra-cotta details were popular in hotel design, and the architects for this building employed them all. The ten-story hotel within a block of Main Street offered easy access to downtown offices and shopping areas, an important draw to the kind of guest the Farrell Hotel Company wished to cultivate. In 1928 the Arkansas Gazette promised that “tourists and commercial guests also will be amply accommodated.” The U-shaped plan has a triple-arched two-story porch nestled between two eight-story wings and a ten-story rear section. Two tile-roofed towers housed the elevator machinery. The Albert Pike was a full-service hotel, with women’s parlors, beauty and barber shops, a restaurant, and accommodations for 150 cars in a two-story parking garage located to the building’s rear, and thus an impressive symbol of luxury in Little Rock. Unlike many hotels during the Great Depression, this one survived and maintained its interior furnishings. A two-story block of rooms was added to the south in the 1960s, but by then, as with many downtown hotels nationwide, its customer base was shifting to the new motor hotels along the major highways. In the 1970s, the building was converted into a residence hotel.