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Hippee Building

Architect
Sawyer and Watrous
Year
1913
Style
Chicago School
City
Des Moines, IA
Hippee Building
Photo: McGhiever, CC BY 4.0
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The Hippee Building is a 172-foot, 12-story downtown tower completed in 1913 for George B. Hippee, whose father George M. Hippee was among the city's first merchants; George B. himself developed the first interurban railway connecting Des Moines to central Iowa. Designed by the Des Moines firm of Sawyer and Watrous in the Early Commercial style, it was Iowa's tallest skyscraper when it was finished. It also carried the names Southern Surety Building, Savings and Loan Building, and Midland Building over the years.

the building

Iowa's tallest, briefly. At 172 feet and 12 stories, the Hippee Building was Iowa's tallest skyscraper at the time of its 1913 completion.

Office tower to hotel. The building served as offices for decades until the Aparium Hotel Group of Chicago acquired it in 2017 and began converting it into a 138-room hotel.

the style

Sawyer and Watrous designed the tower in the Early Commercial style, the vocabulary Des Moines architects used for the city's first generation of tall office buildings.

More on Chicago School

the architect

Sawyer and Watrous was a Des Moines architectural firm responsible for the Hippee Building's design.

significance

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018, after decades as an office building and its 2017 conversion into a hotel.

nearby

All 27 buildings in Des Moines