In 1948, the Terrace Plaza Hotel introduced modernism to the country with its architecture and art. Now, it’s on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the most endangered places in America.
The hotel — built by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — was America’s first hotel in the postwar era, and was designed, in part, by Natalie DeBlois, one of the few female architects at the time. It was the first hotel to have elevators without operators in them, the first to have rooms with individual temperature controls, and it even had sofas that would convert to beds at the push of a button.
It's been abandoned and deteriorating for years, but Paul Muller of the Cincinnati Preservation Association is hoping the city will adopt a preservation-based redevelopment strategy to save the historic building rather than allowing a new buyer to strip the building of its character.
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