It’s always been up to art and design buffs to make their own way to the tiny West Texas bucket-list town of Marfa, and to figure out what to do once they arrived. With the opening of the 55-key Hotel Saint George, which also adds one more restaurant and bar to the local offerings, things just got easier. “We’ve only had 100 or so rooms here, and for the longest time we’ve needed more,” says Tim Crowley, a longtime resident of the remote arts colony and desert destination. “I figured if I did it, then it would have more of a Marfa flare.”
After all, he’d already founded a nonprofit theater and an expertly curated bookstore. For about a year, he and Carlos Jiménez, an architect friend from Houston, napkin-sketched ideas, then enlisted Dallas-based HKS to turn their vision into a functioning hotel. The architects added three floors on top of a circa-1920s one-story store that itself was built on the footprint of the original 1880s Hotel Saint George. Now, the first floor is the property’s public space, which includes a relocated version of Crowley’s bookstore.
“The column and beam grid of the ground floor make for sort of random elements,” says HKS associate principal and design director Mary Alice Palmer of the lobby. “So we decided to celebrate that sculptural nature and let all of the volumes float away.” Used as a starting point for organizing the space for its diverse visitors—from families heading to nearby Big Bend National Park to an international art crowd and local ranchers—“the columns become interesting and decorative in their own way,” as guests move around the space.
For guestrooms, Palmer says, “we took our cues from the minimalist natural surroundings and the equally inspiring art scene.” Headboard walls, for example, are covered in gray felt, she says, a “humble material with a softness and character that’s in keeping with that Marfa feel.” And in LaVenture restaurant, designers turned to some of the town’s smaller buildings that house the modernist and period furniture collections by Donald Judd, the artist who came to Marfa in the 1970s and put it on the cultural map. The mix of new and vintage chairs are juxtaposed with a series of “heavily carved and ornate Masonic chairs” in the private dining area, says Palmer. Elsewhere, vintage rugs and repurposed brick and wood from torn down local buildings, as well as marble from the hotel’s original façade complete the eclectic look.
Other contributors include local artisan Joey Benton, who fabricated metal lighting fixtures and a handsome mahogany and steel reception desk, and Dallas-based interior designer Alice Cottrell, who assembled the hotel’s extensive art package and its collection of accessories such as sheepskin rugs. “The uniting element is that everything has a really authentic, natural feel,” says Cottrell. “That’s what Marfa is about.” One of her favorite touches, she adds, is the Indonesian tree trunk tables in the guestrooms. Another highlight: the dozen Aalto tank chairs in the lobby. “Judd was a big fan of Alvar Aalto’s work,” says Cottrell. “It was really important to Tim that we acknowledge that.”
