[3] It was designed in the Beaux-Arts architectural style by Harry C. Deckbar as the main architect, assisted by Thornton Fitzhugh and Frank George Krucker.

[2] The building was a church planting for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,[4] with a large auditorium boasting the largest pipe organ in the Western United States and a men-only hotel on the six upper floors (renamed the Embassy Hotel in 1930).

"[3] The pastor was Reverend Charles Claude Selecman,[3] who later served as the third president of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

For example, actress Norma Talmadge watched a film she starred in, The Battle Cry of Peace, in this auditorium in 1915.

[3] Additionally, from the 1930s to the 1950s, jazz artists like Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Charlie Parker performed here.