The Nueces Hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas, was a luxury hotel that also served the city as a center of social and political life during the early 20th century and was for years the largest building in Texas south of San Antonio.
Beginnings
In the early 1900s, leading Corpus Christi citizens realized that the city needed such a hotel to attract tourists and business and decided to build one downtown. They chose the site of Hopson's meat processing plant and the Anderson family salt mill, including the Andersons' two-story house that also stood on the site. The six-story hotel, built by Ayers and Ayers Architects during a spate of municipal improvements, was completed in 1913, occupying the block between Water Street and Chaparral Streets and having its main entrance on Peoples Street. It was named the Nueces Hotel, also the name of a hotel in La Pryor, Texas. In 1919, wealthy rancher W. W. Jones (1858–1942), who in 1929 built the nearby and still extant Jones Building, bought out the other stockholders to become the sole owner.
Amenities
The Nueces was a large brick building with all the modern amenities, including its own laundry and electric power plant (with Claude L. Stephens as electrical engineer). It had a classical-style lobby with Corinthian columns, decorated ceilings, and marble and tile floors, that was furnished with huge, plush chairs and couches. The sun parlor had fine brickwork, potted plants, area rugs, and wicker furniture, and tall windows admitted abundant daylight, creating a pleasant dining experience with an outdoor atmosphere and indoor comfort; the tropical outdoor garden let guests and others enjoy their meals among palm trees, sheltered by walls from the street and from the prevailing winds that cooled the east lobby. A barbershop and a number of stores were in or near the main lobby, including such specialty stores as Al's Men's Wear and the Hardy Shoe Store.
Location and staff
Originally, the hotel stood almost on the bayshore (Water Street, on its east side, at that time ran along the water's edge), thus was convenient to one of Corpus Christi's main attractions. Until the present landfill and seawall were built, Peoples Street extended out as a covered pier over the water, covered in deference to ladies' modesty, that ended in a pavilion. In 1922, this was replaced with the Pleasure Pier, a similar wooden wharf-like structure for fishing and mooring boats. When the seawall was finished, the water was further from the building, but still within easy walking distance. In 1940, Peoples Street reached to the T-head, a paved parking area shaped like a letter T extending out on the water for fishing and boat slips.
The first manager seems to have been Joe J. Nix. Staff included uniformed bellhops, generally black men, and uniformed Hispanic girls as elevator operators. Pages, according to Theodore Fuller's memoir, were boys whose voices had changed; they wore snappy uniforms that they changed near the kitchen, from which they pilfered éclairs and other tidbits. These were not considered demeaning jobs; bellhop Lincoln Daniels started a long career there in 1914 and as bell captain was liked and trusted by staff and guests. Gilberto S. Revilla, in the 1930s worked in the laundry and met Martina Revilla, who was an elevator operator. They married in 1936 and were married 65 years. Revilla, who died in 2000, requested his 1930s employment at the Nueces Hotel be mentioned with pride in his obituary, and so did Walter Everette Hull, who as a hotel soda jerk once served Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson.
Activities
Microfilm newspapers from the era, preserved in the Corpus Christi Central Library, list advertising that shows prices. Rooms were a dollar per day up. The Club Breakfast started at 25 cents, the Businessman's Lunch at 50 cents. Another ad notes that for Thanksgiving 1915, turkey dinner at the Nueces, including oysters and olives, was one dollar.
In addition to fine food, the Nueces provided professional entertainment, with dances on summer nights and weekends year round. The restaurants featured string quartets, piano, violin, and vocal soloists. A newspaper ad from 1915 promises that Gayle Forbush and Morgan Wheeler of New York City, doubtless well known entertainers in the early 1900s, would perform exhibition dancing daily from 7 to 9 pm. St. Cecilia's Orchestra, which is described as "Mexican", meaning in the context of the times that the members were Hispanic and not necessarily Mexican nationals or persons who played Tejano music, performed the dance music every summer evening and once a week year round.