Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek

Sheppard King made his fortune in cotton, and in 1925 he built a house above Turtle Creek in Dallas in the manner of an Italian Renaissance villa. More than half a century later Caroline Rose Hunt, daughter of the oilman H. L. Hunt, bought it, restored it and in 1981 opened Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek around it, the hotel with which her company, Rosewood, began.

History

Hunt founded Rosewood in 1979 with the idea that a hotel should feel like a private house, and the Mansion was its first test. The restaurant opened in the old King rooms in 1980, and the hotel, a new building of guest rooms beside the house, followed in 1981. Turtle Creek was already one of the smartest addresses in Dallas, and the hotel gave the city a place to dine and stay that it had not had before.

The restaurant made the name of the place. Dean Fearing, who took charge of the kitchen in 1985, spent more than two decades there and became one of the chefs most closely tied to Southwestern cooking, with dishes such as tortilla soup and lobster tacos. He left in 2007 to open his own restaurant elsewhere in Dallas. Rosewood has since grown into a group with hotels on several continents, but the Mansion is still its founding house, and it has been renovated in stages to keep pace with its younger siblings.

Architecture and design

The King house is built in an Italian Renaissance style, with a tiled roof, arched windows and a formal entrance court. Inside, the rooms that now serve as the restaurant and private dining rooms keep much of their original detail: carved woodwork, decorated ceilings and fireplaces. The hotel building beside it, added for the 1981 opening, was designed to sit quietly next to the mansion, and the gardens and pool between them tie the two together. The arrangement, an old house for eating and drinking and a newer building for sleeping, has been copied by many hotels since.

Rooms and suites

The guest rooms and suites are in the hotel building rather than the old house. The higher floors look over the trees of Turtle Creek towards the downtown skyline. Rosewood's idea of the hotel as a residence shows in the scale: there are relatively few rooms, and the service is personal rather than ceremonial.

Dining

The Mansion Restaurant still occupies the house's principal rooms, so dinner means eating in what was once the Kings' private home. The cooking has moved on from the Southwestern menus of the Fearing years towards contemporary American food, but the restaurant keeps its formality. The Mansion Bar, all leather and wood, is a Dallas fixture for drinks after work, and the terrace outside takes tables in the milder months.

Weddings and events

The mansion's period rooms and its courtyard host weddings, receptions and private dinners, and the hotel has meeting rooms for smaller corporate events. The scale is that of a large house rather than a convention hotel, so gatherings stay on the smaller side.

Location

Turtle Creek Boulevard runs through one of the greenest parts of Dallas, a parkway of trees and water just north of downtown, close to the restaurants of Uptown and the museums of the Arts District. Highland Park and its shopping village lie a short drive to the north. Dallas Love Field is about fifteen minutes away by car, and Dallas/Fort Worth International around half an hour. Downtown's towers are close enough to see from the upper floors, yet the creek and its trees keep the noise away. No other luxury hotel in Dallas can claim to have started a hotel company.