The twenty-nine-story Renaissance Revival tower, with Pegasus, the “Flying Red Horse,” visible above the roof for miles, was the tallest building west of the Mississippi for twenty years and a city icon. English-trained, New York City architect Bossom designed the limestone structure for the Magnolia Petroleum Company, which merged with Mobil Oil in 1959, taking the flying red horse as its logo. While the tower is U-shaped, typical of the time for light and ventilation, the tall central well faces the street, instead of the rear, creating a dramatic effect of two slender towers resting on a tall, multifloor pedestal. A flying archway joins the towers at the seventeenth floor. The building’s owner, drugstore magnate Z. E. Marvin, was the local Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s.
Signmaker J. B. McMath constructed a thirty-foot revolving horse trimmed in red neon in 1934. In deteriorated condition, Pegasus was removed in 1999 and replaced with a duplicate. The original was restored and installed at the Omni Dallas Convention Center Hotel (DS10).