The logo atop the Adam's Mark hotel has been described as a "red Gumby," a bird, a flower and, well, "strange." And now that it's being erased from the Dallas skyline, we decided to find out just what it was.

VERNON BRYANT/DMN

Credit Fred Kummer for developing the logo. The founder of St. Louis-based HBE Corp., which owned Adam's Mark hotels, scribbled the design on a napkin in the Cleveland airport.

"It's just kind of pretty," he once said. "It doesn't mean anything."

In other interviews, he said he also made up the hotel name based on places he had visited. It was either Adam's Mark or "Fred's Beds," he said.

Whatever it was, the logo and name are being removed from the top of the North Olive Street hotel piece by piece this week as it undergoes transformation into the Sheraton Dallas.

Eric Aasen and Molly Motley Blythe