Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk vs Nix Professional Building

Comparing the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk and the Nix Professional Building is interesting because they both stand in San Antonio, TX, and were completed in the same year, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 279ft (85m) with 24 floors above ground, while the Nix Professional Building reaches 276ft (84m) with 23 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk and the Nix Professional Building were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Art Deco style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and Henry T. Phelps followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk is primarily hotel, while the Nix Professional Building is primarily medical.

Originally, the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk was designed for commercial, but over time it was converted to hotel. The Nix Professional Building by contrast has maintained its original role.

The Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk incorporates a 4-star hotel with 306 rooms. More information is available at the official website.

The Nix Professional Building also provides 49 parking spaces.

These two towers illustrate the many possible ways to combine structure and enclosure in skyscraper design.