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Overview

The Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa is a resort in the Ouachita Mountains in Hot Springs, AR. The hotel is located at the north end of "Bathhouse Row".

History

Samuel W. Fordyce and two other entrepreneurs financed the construction of the first luxury hotel in the area, the first Arlington Hotel, which opened in 1875. After almost 20 years of use, it was razed to build a new hotel.

When it was rebuilt in 1892-93, the hotel was known as the New Arlington, and boasted of its Spanish Renaissance architecture. With 300 rooms in four stories of red brick, it had corner towers. This second Arlington burned to the ground on April 5, 1923.

The third Arlington Hotel, designed by Mann and Stern in 1924, is the current hotel at the "Y" intersection at the corner of Central Avenue and Fountain Street. The building's huge size, Spanish-Colonial Revival style, and placement at the terminus of the town's most important vista made the building a key Hot Springs landmark. The original site became a park at the north end of Bathhouse Row.

In the 1930s, the Arlington Hotel was a favorite vacation spot for Al Capone at room 443. The whole floor was even rented out for his staff and bodyguards.

For 30 years the hotel was air conditioned via windows and door louvers until 1955 when the central heating & air was installed. The original bath house elevator - lined with beveled glass and shining brass still exists and still manually operates.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Arlington Hotel (Hot Springs National Park)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0