A wealthy El Paso businessman , Zack T. White , financed initial construction of the hotel . After witnessing a fire destroy another hotel in El Paso , White and architect Henry Charles Trost traveled to San Francisco , California to try to understand how some buildings there survived the earthquake and fire in 1906 . The hotel cost $ 1.5 million to build in order to make it one of the sturdiest structures in El Paso and the most ornate . The large hotel lobby features a stained glass dome over forty-five feet in diameter designed in the Tiffany glass style . During the 1914 Mexican Revolution , it was popular to watch firefights between the revolutionaries and the Mexican Army from the terraces on the roof of the hotel . Some of the most notable people who have stayed at the hotel over its 118-year history include U.S. Presidents G.H.W. Bush , G.W. Bush , Lyndon Johnson , Richard Nixon , William Howard Taft , Herbert Hoover , and Franklin Delano Roosevelt . Other notables include Gloria Swanson , General John J. " Black Jack " Pershing , Pancho Villa , Will Rogers , Enrico Caruso , Amelia Earhart , Sandra Day O’Connor , Gregory Peck , Harrison Ford , Colin Powell , Charles Lindbergh , Clark Gable , John Wayne , Jack Dempsey , U2 , Van Halen , Aerosmith , Peter Frampton , The Grateful Dead , Pink Floyd , The Rolling Stones , Dallas Cowboys , Golden State Warriors , George Strait , Kenny Rogers , Gloria Estefan , and a host of other well known actors , musicians , celebrities and government officials
earthquake and fire in 1906
1906 San Francisco earthquake
Hotel Paso del Norte