El Paso met the likes of the Chicago Art Deco school of style thanks to architect Henry Trost in 1930. The Trost & Trost company had already built many of downtown El Paso's biggest and best buildings, including the Plaza Hotel and the Cortez hotel.

One of the intriguing features of Trost's O.T. Bassett Tower, completed in 1930, is a sculpture of a face over the building's main entrance on Texas Avenue that bears a curiously close resemblance to Trost himself. A series of ten eagle sentries also adorn the Bassett Tower's fifteenth floor ledge.

The fifteen-story O. T. Bassett Tower was completed in 1930. The building was commissioned by an El Paso family active in banking and lumber. The O.T. Bassett Tower was to be Trost's last major building in El Paso. For a while it was the tallest building in El Paso.

What makes Trost & Trost's work stand out was Henry Trost's unwavering eye for details. It's the eagles that guard the Bassett Towers, the conquistadors on The Cortez and the interior of the El Paso del Norte. Each time you look at a Trost Building you find something new. They're just beautiful works of art.

From a gilded brass main lobby and its swift elevators with their ornate doors to the French windows in each office with their art deco fixtures, the entire building is an expression of the aspirations of a growing pre-war economy. From the top floors one can see for miles into Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas, and truly feels that he is on top of the world.

Henry C. Trost designed at least 200 buildings in El Paso before he died in 1933 and was influenced by the work of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. These inspirations, as well as the influence of Southwestern pueblo and Spanish mission architecture, helped to define the look of Trost & Trost's buildings.

Trost was a pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete. Some historians also believe Trost was considered a trailblazer in this practice because he used this material with a constructive zeal not seen before in architecture. One of his early designs, the Mills Building on the corner of Mills and Oregon was the second reinforced concrete skyscraper built in the United States. Built in 1911, Trost left the entire reinforced concrete surface of this 12-story building exposed and used the material for its ornamental designs. Trost & Trost's firm set up office in the building for several years.