Holiday Inn Express Riverwalk Area

The Holiday Inn Express San Antonio N-Riverwalk Area (formerly the Comfort Inn Alamo/Riverwalk) is a hotel in downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA.[1]

Built in 1878, the five-story building is rich in history and served as the San Antonio Bexar County Jail[2] until 1962.[3] 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[2] as a two-story limestone facility containing twenty jail cells. Because of a rapid increase in the city's population, Henry T. Phelps designed a third-floor addition and remodeled the building in 1912, transforming it to the Mission Revival style.

In 1926, a second expansion was designed by Atlee and Robert Ayres,[4] 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 projecting entry with an arched entrance porch. The present façade's appearance dates to that design, when the structure was faced in brick.[3]

A new jail was constructed in 1962; 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. In a 2002 rehabilitation, the building was repainted to emphasize the façade's brick detail.[3]

The jail was once known as the Shrimp Hotel. The double entendre came about because the jail was located on Camaron Street (Calle del Camarón),[5] named using the Spanish word for shrimp—which the locals applied to the crawfish in nearby San Pedro Creek—plentiful during the Spanish colonial period.

External links

• Old Bexar County Jail