Thompson Dallas opened November 14, 2020, inside The National, the restored 52-story former First National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas. The 219-room hotel, developed by Todd Interests at a cost of roughly $460 million for the full mixed-use conversion, marked Hyatt's push to scale its Thompson Hotels brand into a full tower rather than a boutique footprint.
The essentials
Group
Hyatt (Thompson Hotels)
Opening
November 2020
Rooms & suites
219 rooms, including 52 suites and 2 penthouse suites
Segment
Luxury lifestyle
Designer
George Dahl (original 1961 architecture); Merriman Anderson Architects (restoration); Todd Interiors (interiors); SWA Group (landscape)
The hotel occupies the lower floors of The National, a 52-story tower filling an entire downtown Dallas block bounded by Elm, Pacific, Akard and Field streets, address 1401 Elm Street. The site sits at the edge of the Main Street District, steps from the DART Akard rail station, in a stretch of downtown that spent much of the 2010s working through office vacancy before this conversion anchored its retail and residential comeback.
The concept
Built in 1961 as the First National Bank Tower by architect George Dahl — the same designer behind Fair Park's art deco pavilions and the original Neiman Marcus downtown — the building was left largely vacant until developer Todd Interests committed roughly $460 million to convert it into a mixed-use project combining apartments, offices and the 219-room Thompson. The restoration kept 17,555 hand-cut exterior marble panels sourced from the same Greek quarry used for the Parthenon, along with brass-inlaid wood paneling on the ninth floor, pairing them with contemporary furnishings and more than $2 million in commissioned and curated art, including work by Dallas painters David Bates and JD Miller. Rooms average over 700 square feet, finished in walnut and brass with Frette robes and Sferra linens — a scale and materiality distinct from the boutique-format Thompson properties elsewhere in the brand's Hyatt portfolio.
Dining & wellness
Dining opened under culinary director Jeramie Robison (formerly of Uchi) with Nine at The National, a ninth-floor all-day restaurant, and Catbird, a tenth-floor restaurant and rooftop bar with skyline views; a sushi lounge and an Italian restaurant were added in subsequent years. The ninth floor also holds a resort-style pool and a full-service spa alongside a fitness center, plus the 14,000-square-foot National Ballroom on the fourth floor and roughly two acres of combined indoor-outdoor event space.
