Long one of Richmond's premier hotels, the high-rise John Marshall has a sleek, urbane muscularity. A massive, three-story limestone base supports a U-shaped tower that rises to a cornice decorated in vividly colored terra-cotta panels. One of the city's finest buildings, it suffered the fate of many older inner-city hotels and was closed in the late 1970s. At the time of writing, its future looks brighter, since it is undergoing a slow renovation to return it to hotel use.