It is a seven-story steel frame and concrete building designed in the French Renaissance style.

It features decorative vitreous red brick and white terra cotta trim.

The hotel is the masterpiece of Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856–1913), the first professional woman architect in the United States.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it was owned by Tran Dinh Truong, under whose tenure the hotel became a "quasi crack house".

[1] In 2012, the completion of a $35 million rehabilitation project restored the hotel to its original beauty.