|
Holiday Inn Express Riverwalk Area
|
|
| Location: | San Antonio, Texas |
|---|---|
| Built: | 1878 |
| Architect: | Alfred Giles |
| Governing body: | Intercontinental Hotels Group |
| Part of: | Main and Military Plazas Historic District |
| NRHP Reference#: | 79002914 |
| Added to NRHP: | 1979 |
The Holiday Inn Express Riverwalk Area (formerly the Comfort Inn Alamo/Riverwalk) is a hotel in San Antonio, Texas.
Built in 1878, the five-story building is rich in history and served as the San Antonio Bexar County Jail until 1962. In recent years, before becoming a hotel, the building was a records depot for both the city and county and is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The five-story stone and brick structure was originally designed by prominent architect Alfred Giles as a two-story limestone jail containing 20 cages. Because of a rapid increase in the city's population, Henry T. Phelps designed a third floor addition and remodeling in 1912, transforming the building to the Mission Revival style.
In 1926, a second expansion was designed by Atlee and Robert Ayres[1], a father-and-son team and leading architects of their time. The entire appearance of the building was changed with the addition of two floors, a reconfiguration of window openings and a new projecting entry with an arched entrance porch. The present façade's appearance dates to that last addition when the structure was faced in brick. In the 2002 rehabilitation, the building was repainted to emphasize the façade's brick detail. A new jail was constructed in 1962 and the old jail became the County Election Center and Archives Building. In 1983, it was used as a private records storage facility, and later a city records storage facility until 2000.
The jail was once known as the Shrimp Hotel. The double entendre came about because the hotel was located on Camaron Street[2], named using the Spanish word for shrimp—or crawfish—plentiful in the nearby San Pedro Creek during the Spanish Colonial times.