Fort Worth architect Wyatt Hedrick designed this Art Deco-style hotel for Charles Long in 1938. Hedrick's original drawings for the Long Hotel are archived as Project No. 2577 at the Alexander Architectural Archive at the University of Texas Libraries in Austin. Built in 1938 to 1939 of fireproof construction, the Long Hotel features a three-story concrete frame with brick-faced curtain walls and hollow-clay tile partitions. The exterior walls are faced with creamcolored brick. Art Deco details include its horizontal linear composition and limestone horizontal line separating the building’s lower floors from the rooms above. Vertical limestone parapet ornamentation and a cantilevered rounded metal canopy over the entry exhibit Art Deco influence. The Long Hotel has a flat roof that drains to the rear, and the current owner, Erath County, installed a rubber roof in 2006. The façade, or south elevation of the hotel along W. College St., features a central entryway topped with a rounded canopy. The sidelights and transom around the door are enclosed with wood. Four bays flank each side of the entry and are now enclosed with wood, although first-floor windows on the west elevation are filled with double-hung wood windows. Nine bays on the second floor of the south elevation are filled with metal windows that feature a vertical fixed pane alongside a double-hung window. Nine bays on the third floor of the south elevation are either open to the elements or boarded up. Built at a cost of $35,000 and $999 for the lot, the Long Hotel offered air conditioning, a first-floor grand lobby with terrazzo tile, a dining room, and kitchen. In 1948, 40 guest rooms accommodated visitors who paid $2.25 and up per night to stay at the Long Hotel. The Art Deco hotel most likely replaced the two-story Long Hotel built in the late nineteenth century one block west of the courthouse square. The Long Hotel is next door to a bus station built between 1930 and 1949. Over the years, various cafes and restaurants served customers from the first floor of the hotel, and during the 1970s, a dinner club offered dining followed by dancing on the third floor. The hotel has been vacant since the late 1970s and is deteriorating from neglect.
