A wealthy El Paso businessman, Zack T. White, financed initial construction of the hotel. After witnessing a fire destroy another hotel in El Paso, White and architect Henry Charles Trost traveled to San Francisco, California to try to understand how some buildings there survived the earthquake and fire in 1906. The hotel cost $1.5 million to build in order to make it one of the sturdiest structures in El Paso and the most ornate. The large hotel lobby features a stained glass dome over forty-five feet in diameter designed in the Tiffany glass style.