The Surety Hotel converted Des Moines' former Iowa Loan & Trust Company tower — a 1913 Beaux-Arts skyscraper that had never operated as a hotel — into a 137-room Autograph Collection property that opened November 11, 2020. Aparium Hotel Group worked with DLR Group and Slingshot Architecture to preserve the building's bank-era details, from vault doors to a twelve-story mail chute, around Mulberry Street Tavern and a downtown courtyard.
The essentials
Group
Aparium Hotel Group (Marriott Autograph Collection)
Opening
November 2020
Rooms & suites
137 rooms
Segment
Boutique/Upscale
Designer
DLR Group (interior design) with Slingshot Architecture
The hotel occupies the corner of 6th Avenue and Mulberry Street, in the cluster of early-twentieth-century office towers that once made up downtown Des Moines' financial and insurance district. The East Village and the Polk County Courthouse sit within view of the upper floors, and the address puts guests inside the compact core the city has spent the past decade rebuilding around restaurants, breweries and river-adjacent trails rather than at its edge.
The concept
The building opened in 1913 as headquarters for the Iowa Loan & Trust Company and, at twelve stories, briefly stood as the state's tallest structure — a Beaux-Arts showcase of marble, ornamental plasterwork and a mail chute that still runs the full height of the stairwell. It functioned as offices, never as lodging, until Aparium Hotel Group converted it into a 137-room hotel that opened November 11, 2020, becoming the first genuinely new hotel operation inside the tower rather than a renovation of an existing one. DLR Group led the interior design in collaboration with Slingshot Architecture, keeping the original bank vault doors, the twelve-story staircase and the banking hall largely intact while adding cognac-brown suede-plastered walls, green and burgundy leather furnishings and marble hexagon tile. The result targets a guest who wants the specifics of Des Moines over a generic downtown box: original architecture, locally sourced in-room details, and a building with a documented civic history rather than an anonymous shell.
Dining & wellness
Mulberry Street Tavern is the hotel's ground-floor restaurant and bar, serving elevated American tavern fare — wood-fired dishes, a smash burger, local beers on tap and cocktails built around Des Moines references. The hotel also operates a lobby coffee counter and an outdoor courtyard used for events and seasonal programming; no spa or rooftop bar is part of the property.
