Last updated: October 5, 2026
Article
Case Study – Hawn Hotel, Arcadia Theatre, and Hawn West, Temple, Texas
Courtesy of Turner Brother Development
The federal, state historic tax credits were used to rehabilitate the historic Hawn Hotel and the neighboring Arcadia Theatre, and a two-story commercial building, helping revitalize an entire block of long-vacant buildings and bring much-needed new housing and economic activity to Temple’s historic downtown commercial district.
Built in 1927, the nine-story Hawn Hotel, originally called the Doering Hotel, was the city’s first skyscraper and luxury hotel. The hotel fell out of favor with travelers in the 1950s, who preferred the many motels along a newly finished interstate, and the building continued to deteriorate before closing in 1978 and eventually being condemned in 1989. The adjacent Arcadia Theatre, built in 1928, also closed in 1978, and the roof later collapsed, causing significant damage to the atmospheric theater’s interior.
The former hotel, theater, and adjacent commercial building have been rehabilitated as part of one overall mixed-use redevelopment project. The long-vacant hotel now includes 33 new housing units and ground-floor commercial spaces as part of a $17.6 million rehabilitation project that repaired the building’s Classical and Spanish Revival-style masonry exterior and historic wood windows. The Arcadia Theatre has been rehabilitated into a multi-purpose performance and events space, and the commercial building has now been redeveloped for ground-floor commercial spaces and 26 new apartments on the upper floor.
Together, these buildings showcase the catalytic effect that the historic tax credits can have on an area.