William B. Tabler

William Benjamin Tabler Sr. (October 28, 1914 – February 3, 2004) was an American architect who designed more than 400 hotels. He was best known for giving Hilton hotels the clean but sometimes stark face of corporate America, most notably in the 46-story slablike New York Hilton Midtown near Rockefeller Center.

Biography Tabler was born in Momence, Illinois to Clyde Lyeth Tabler (1881–1965) and Frances Beatrice Ridley (1887–1983). He attended Harvard University and graduated bachelor of science (cum laude) in 1936, bachelor of architecture in 1939 and master of architecture the same year. In 1939 he joined the Chicago firm Holabird & Root, where he worked on his first big hotel project, the 1,000-room Statler Hotel in Washington, D.C. (1958) Pittsburgh Hilton (1959) El Ponce Intercontinental (1960-1975) New York Hilton (1963) London Hilton (1963) San Francisco Hilton (1964) Washington Hilton (1965) Inter-Continental Dacca (1966) Grand Hyatt Cairo (2000)