Houston Medical Center Hotel: Mid-Century Building Reopens as Westin

Rendering of the new Westin Medical Center redevelopment, which will have signigicant street-level retail. Image: Pearl Hospitality

In Houston, The historic Medical Towers building in the Texas Medical Center has been transformed into the 273-room Westin Houston Medical Center.

The hotel recently opened in a mid-century modernist building located across the street from Houston Methodist and Texas Children’s Hospital. Lodging demand is high in the Texas Medical Center, which has 9,200 patient beds and where 180,000 surgeries are performed annually.

Pearl Hospitality of Houston redeveloped the 18-story building, which originally as a medical professional building in 1954 at 1709 Dryden Road, between Main and Fannin streets.

The Medical Towers, one of the first medical office buildings in the Texas Medical Center, orginally was designed by the architectural firm Goleman & Rolfe, with consulting Pritzker prize-winning architect Gordon Bunshaft, of Skidmore, Owens and Merrill.

For the Westin redevelopment, he project team includes: BRR Architects, project architect; Baskervill, interior design architect; MBCM Incorporated, design consultant; Collaborative Engineering Group, project engineer; Henderson Rogers, structural engineer and Texas HRE Construction, general contractor.

Said William R. Franks, a member of Pearl Hospitality’s development team. “This ambitious 1954 tower was built at a time when the similarly ambitious vision of the Texas Medical Center was launching. As the area continues to grow and reach new heights, keeping this building as a part of that story adds tremendous value for the city.”