Architect William Lee Stoddart designed this fifteen-story tower for owners William and Grace Winecoff, and it opened in 1913 as the Winecoff Hotel, advertised as absolutely fireproof thanks to its steel-frame construction. That claim held for the structure but not for its interior. On December 7, 1946, a fire of undetermined origin swept through the building’s single unenclosed stairway, the only means of escape above the third floor, killing 119 people, including the Winecoffs themselves, in what remains the deadliest hotel fire in American history.
The tragedy, following similar fires in Chicago and Dubuque that same year, prompted sweeping changes to national fire codes, including mandatory enclosed stairwells and a ban on advertising buildings as fireproof. The hotel closed for decades afterward, serving briefly as government offices before extensive renovation reopened it in 2017 as the Ellis Hotel, named for the adjacent street.