Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk

Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk
  1. About the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk in San Antonio
    1. Building Catalogations
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectureal style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and built between 1929 and 1930, for a reported $2.50 million dollars, in San Antonio, TX.

Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Alamo National Bank Buildilng.

Its precise street address is 105 South Saint Mary`s Street, San Antonio, TX. You can also find it on the map here.

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk is a structure of significant importance both for the city of San Antonio and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on March 28th 2006.

The building has been restored 4 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1956, 1961, 1974 and 2007.

Building's timeline

Construction begins
1929
95
Construction completed
1930
94
a
Restoration
1956
68
b
Restoration
1961
63
c
Restoration
1974
50
Added to the NRHP
2006
18
Restoration
2007
17
years ago
2024
  1. 1956 - A rooftop sign and weather spire were added.
  2. 1961 - An 8 story parking was added as an attached building on the west side .
  3. 1972 to 1974 - The wooden sash windows were replaced with aluminum ones, and the mezzanine at the south and the lobby was expanded. The architect in charge was Ford, Powell & Carson.

Architect and team

Graham, Anderson, Probst & White was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Also known as GAP&W, the firm was founded in 1912 in Chicago, and remained active until 2006, when it finally closed its doors.

GAP&W is not only key in the evolution of Chicago's architecture because of the buildings they designed, which were many and nothing short of cutting-edge for their time, but also because two of their architects, Hubert Burnham and Daniel Burnham, eventually started their own practice, which became Burnham Brothers, yet another of the most influential firms the city has ever seen.

The firm's style evolved according to the times. Their first buildings had clear Beaux-Arts inspirations, but they eventually embraced the arrival of Art-Deco, as well as neogothic and neoclassicism.

Graham, Anderson, Probst & White was in charge of the architectural design, however, architecture is a complex discipline, which usually involves many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was McKenzie Construction as the Main Contractor.

Architectural Style

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk was completed in 1930, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk reaches an architectural height of 279ft (85m), 338ft (103m) if you count the antenna. It has a total of 25 floors, 24 above ground and 1 basements, served by 6 elevators.

When it opened its doors to the public in 1930, the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk was primarily used as Commercial space. That however, is no longer the case, and today it mainly provides Hotel space.

About the Hotel

The hotel is a 4 stars category hotel, with a total of 306 rooms available to the public. The name of the hotel is Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk.

338ft (103m)
279ft (85m)
1 basements

Materials & Structure

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk uses a frame structure made of mixed columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a three-story Minnesota gray granite base, followed by two stories clad in beige terra cotta. The rest of the facade was finished with beige bricks and dark brown brick spandrels. The ornamental panels are made of terracotta. The building culminates in the four-story extension with a copper mansard roof.

Other materials found at the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk include, walnut, used on door panels, and marble, found on fluted columns and pilasters in the 2-story high vestibule and on the walls and floors of the building.

Sources

  • catalog.archives.gov