Auberge Resorts Just Opened a Luxe New Hotel in Texas. Here’s a Look Inside.
You could say that Auberge Resorts Collection’s Bowie House, which opens today in Fort Worth’s buzzed-about Cultural District, is an extension of owner Jo Ellard’s home.
Pronounced “boo-ee” (as in famed frontiersman James Bowie), the new resort sits on on land where Ellard, president of Bowie Place Properties, lived for many years— commuting from her primary home in Dallas to attend equestrian events in the area. Though rooted in military history, Fort Worth is after all a big horse town.
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“Many years ago when I began spending a lot of time in Fort Worth, I bought a cottage in the historic residential district that was built in the early 1920s,” says Ellard. “Then I bought land around it — I don’t know why. I wasn’t thinking about a hotel at that point.”
Once the hotel idea kicked in, the darling little cottage Ellard stood in the way of plans for the ground-up new development.
“We tried to relocate it. One lady wanted it for her ranch, but she didn’t want to pay the cost of moving it. It wasn’t the right size for another man’s ranch. So we had to pull it down,” notes Ellard with due solemnity.
Despite personal attachment, Ellard says that the blank slate gave her an opportunity to worked hand-in-hand with the architectural and interior design firm BOKA Powell to create a modern luxury hotel that screams Texas, or more specifically, Fort Worth. But that doesn’t mean she gave the resort a cliched rootin’-tootin’ western theme. Bowie House, she says, is all about modern, everyday life western life with a luxury edge.
“I want people to know they are in Fort Worth,” she says. “It is not like walking into a hotel. People who have seen it say it feels like walking into a grand Texan home.”
In the lobby, a backdrop of warm brown tones blends with bold furniture of a grand size — Ellard who picked the pieces is over six feet tall. “Men tell me they feel really comfortable in these seats,” she says.
Echoing the public spaces, when it came to guest rooms—which number 88 studios, 12 lofts, and six suites—she didn’t want feminine, floral, or frilly.
“I wouldn’t call the rooms masculine,” she says, hesitating to find the word. “They are handsome and they have a lot of room.”
Colors and textures include taupe, a soft rust, mohair, iron, and a material that, “looks like tooled leather,” she says.
The bathrooms are, however, undeniably beautiful, with a striking emerald-green tile lined walk-in shower cave, and welcoming separate soaking tub.
Spacious and with views over the Cultural District, the 1,900-square-foot Goodnight Suite (the hotel’s answer to a presidential suite) was another opportunity for Ellard to inject glamour into her understated handsome design ethic.
“It can be one, two, or three bedrooms,” says Ellard. “The dining table seats 10, it has this beautiful, large off-white sofa and comfortable lounge chairs.” There’s also a wet bar and plentiful closets.
An avid art collector, Ellard chose the pictures that fill the hotel herself—even bringing in some artworks from her Dallas home. “I bought many of the pieces at Art Basel in Switzerland and in Miami. Some of the pieces come from the Scope,” she says. “There’s art in all mediums and several styles: some is modern, some pop, some western, but not traditional western. It includes a lot of emerging artists.” Most of the art is also for sale.
But Ellard was unusually hands-off when it came to menus at the hotel’s various restaurants, including its signature dining room Bricks and Horses. “Auberge is in charge of that. The idea is we want to appeal to all tastes,” she says. Still, that didn’t stop her from giving the eateries what she describes as having a “Ralph Lauren–esque country luxe feel.” At Bricks and Horses, the focal point is a dramatic, four-foot-tall weathered steel sculpture by Don Drumm, depicting a pair of horses running wild and free.
However, the Bar at Bowie House is where her favorite feature stands: a 150-year-old carved wood bar.
“It just fell into my lap,“ Ellard recalls. “We were thinking about how the bar should look and whether it should it be vintage or modern, and an antiques dealer I know contacted me and asked if I might be interested in this bar he found.”
Elsewhere in the hotel there are a fitness center, a pool deck, and the Ash Spa—with five treatment rooms, a sauna, a steam room, a nail studio, a spa boutique, and a relaxation lounge. On the ground floor, off the lobby, a high-contrast turquoise door leads to the Billet Room, the hotel’s game room.
“We bought an Art Deco pool table, which has all these cigarette burns on it,” Ellard says. “We like to joke those are Dean Martin’s cigarette burns.”
This is Ellard’s first hotel development, but she also dabbling in real estate. The property includes seven townhomes, each for sale.
“People called it cow town,” says Ellard. “People ask why build here and not in Dallas. Well, here we are the first luxury boutique hotel. But in Dallas, it’s been done already.”
Rates start at $609.
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