Wyndham Hotel Corporation was founded in 1981 in Dallas, Texas, by Trammell Crow, the president of Trammel Crow Company (TCC). The company appears to have been named after a friend of Crow's, a woman named Wyndham Robertson, who wrote a profile of him for Fortune magazine. As the company grew, it eventually merged with a hotel REIT called Patriot American Hospitality (PAH). Patriot American organized the combined company as a paired-share REIT, in which Patriot owned the real estate assets and leased the hotels to Wyndham to run.