The Plaza Hotel Pioneer Park

The Plaza Hotel Pioneer Park reopened in 2020 after a $78 million restoration of the tower at 106 West Mills Avenue, which opened in 1930 as one of Conrad Hilton's first high-rise hotels. The 130-room hotel in downtown El Paso has a wood-fired Mexican restaurant, Ámbar, and a rooftop bar, La Perla. At 19 stories it was once the tallest building in El Paso, and in its early decades it hosted Hollywood figures and dignitaries, among them Conrad Hilton himself and Elizabeth Taylor. The hotel describes the work as a multi-year restoration.

The place

The hotel faces Pioneer Park in downtown El Paso, at 106 West Mills Avenue. Valet parking costs $30 plus tax per night, with unlimited in and out, and street parking is also possible. An adjacent garage serves the building. Downtown El Paso sits at the border with Ciudad Juárez, and the hotel's rooftop bar looks over the city from the 17th floor.

The concept

Opened on November 30, 1930, this Pueblo Revival and Art Deco tower was the ninth and tallest hotel in Conrad Hilton's young chain. It went up on the site of the Sheldon Hotel, which burned down on April 9, 1929, and construction began only days before the stock market crash. Henry Trost's firm, Trost & Trost, is the architect listed in the National Register entry, added in 1980 under the group of commercial structures Trost designed in El Paso.

Hilton sold the hotel in 1963 and it became the Plaza Hotel. It closed in 1991. El Paso businessman Paul Foster bought it in 2008, and after the 2019 works led by the architecture firm Cooper Carry it reopened as The Plaza Hotel Pioneer Park. Apart from the original facade, the building was rebuilt inside in a project of more than $78 million. The restoration kept the historic signage, the brick facade, the precast deco reliefs and medallions, and the Spanish-tiled pyramidal crown. Original Hilton logos remain on the elevator doors.

The 130 rooms and suites take their cues from Pueblo Revival and Art Deco styles and the West Texas landscape, with channel-tufted headboards, Matouk linens, Caffe Bruno marble and an art collection.

Dining & wellness

Ámbar Restaurante serves wood-fired Mexican cuisine and says it holds the largest agave spirit collection in Texas.

La Perla, a bar and restaurant on the 17th floor, is billed as the highest outdoor viewpoint in El Paso. It occupies the former penthouse where Elizabeth Taylor briefly lived, according to the hotel.