DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Auditorium Hotel. Houston, Harris County.
Now, some buildings just sit there. Others carry the whole weight of a city's story in their brickwork. This one's the latter.
The Auditorium Hotel went up in 1926 — right in the beating heart of Houston's theater district — and the man behind it was a Houston investor by the name of Michele DeGeorge. Born in 1850, DeGeorge had made the journey from Italy to the United States back in 1881, and by the time this building rose from the ground, he was a man who knew how to put something lasting together. He wouldn't live to see the full arc of what he'd built — he passed in 1927, just a year after the hotel opened — but the building kept right on standing.
The architect he chose was Joseph Finger, born in 1887, a man with a sharp eye and a longer career ahead of him. Finger gave the upper stories Italian renaissance detailing — a nod, maybe unspoken, to the world DeGeorge had crossed an ocean to leave behind. Now, the hotel sat right next to the city auditorium — that great civic anchor of Houston's cultural life — though that auditorium is gone now, razed, taken down by time and progress and whatever else cities do to the things they once loved.
But the hotel remained. And that's the point, isn't it? The theater district moved and changed around it.
The auditorium fell. Houston grew into the sprawling thing it became. And through all of Houston's commercial development, the Auditorium Hotel held its ground, carrying the memory of what once surrounded it.
Sometimes the landmark isn't the tallest thing left standing. It's the one that remembers everything that isn't.
What the marker says
The Auditorium Hotel was built in 1926 for Houston investor Michele DeGeorge (1850-1927), who came to the United States from Italy in 1881. Designed by architect Joseph Finger (1887-1953), the building features Italian renaissance detailing in the upper stories. Its location in the center of Houston's theater district and its association with the now-razed city auditorium have contributed to its significance as a Houston landmark during the city's commercial development. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1984