The Aldridge Hotel rises eleven storeys from the edge of US-270, a slab of brick and limestone that still looks taller than anything else in town. It was completed in 1930 at the peak of McAlester's coal-and-railroad prosperity and was billed as the finest hotel between Tulsa and Dallas.
The building closed as a hotel decades ago and has spent most of its later life as senior housing, but the bones are unchanged: tall windows, deep recessed entrances, faint Art Deco detailing along the cornice. It is best seen from a block or two south, where the whole shape stands clear against the prairie sky.