National Historic Landmark - Carew Tower-Netherland Plaza Hotel

Built during the Great Depression, this hotel complex is one of the finest examples of skyscraper modernism in America.

The complex of the hotel and tower is a particularly coherent series of public areas that ascend upward from the street entrances and are evidence of the masterhand Walter W. Ahlschlager of Chicago, an architect with experience designing dramatic theater spaces such as the flamboyant Roxy in New York.

As designed, it makes the most complete statement of the 1920s Jazz Age, an embodiment of speed, high style, and a mass-market machine age.

The block-square complex cost $33,000,000, an enormous sum for the time, and was finished in 13 months by crews working seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

The Netherland Hotel is a superb example of European-Deco design adapted to commerce; most of the decorative work had been created in France several years prior to construction of the complex and exhibited at the 1925 Exhibition of Decorative Art in Paris.

Courtesy National Park Service National Historical Landmarks