How San Antonio's Old Money Built a Hill of Mansions and Then Sold Them All Off: Alamo Heights

In January 2024, Alamo Heights' architectural review board looked at a 1922 Tudor Revival house on Encino Avenue — designed by Adams & Adams, good enough for a national architecture magazine in 1926, still holding its hand-forged handrails and carved Italian marble fireplace surrounds. The board voted unanimously that the house was significant and recommended denying its demolition. Ted Flato of Lake|Flato wrote in personally. So did the executive director of the local AIA chapter. Everybody with standing in San Antonio architecture said the same thing: don't lose this one. It didn't matter. A significance finding in Alamo Heights can delay a demolition. It cannot stop one. State law prohibits the city from denying the request. The council delayed, delayed again, and the last extension ran out in June 2024. Over five years, more than 75 houses in that town have been razed or approved for demolition. Alamo Heights is 1.8 square miles. And here's what makes this different from every other version of the story. Alamo Heights was never supposed to be uniformly rich. A Denver syndicate bought 1,400 acres of the old Anderson ranch in 1890, turned the ranch house into the Argyle Hotel, laid streetcar tracks, and bent the roads around the oaks. Then they went broke. The land beyond that first development was replatted into smaller, irregular lots for modest houses and sold off to a dozen different builders — and the city's own history says the result was a community of varied styles that attracted people of different income groups and ages. The character everyone is now trying to save came out of a bankruptcy. In 1922, fearing San Antonio wanted their tax base without providing services, residents voted 289 to 8 at the Argyle Hotel to incorporate. They paved every street, bought the water system, built a school district people now organize their lives around. Then the city grew around them and there was nowhere left to go. Unlike River Oaks and unlike Highland Park, Alamo Heights saw it coming. In 2010 it passed a demolition review ordinance. It built the tool. Then the state took away the power to use it. Only one great house on that ground is certain to survive. Marion Koogler McNay gave hers away in 1950 — the Ayres mansion, the 23 acres, 700 works of art, and two-thirds of her fortune. Same decision Ima Hogg made in Houston. Same outcome. CHAPTERS 0:00 The House on Encino Avenue 3:34 Springs, Ranchland and a Hotel 5:38 The Bankruptcy That Made the Place 8:02 Two Hundred and Eighty-Nine to Eight 9:57 What They Wrote Down 11:58 The City They Seceded From 13:47 The Sorting 16:03 The Men Who Drew It 16:58 The Woman Who Gave Hers Away 19:36 What the State Did 22:59 The Fight Now 26:20 What the Founders Actually Did 28:04 What Remains SOURCES Alamo Heights, TX — Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/alamo-heights-tx Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum — Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/marion-koogler-mcnay-art-museum Alamo Heights — SAH Archipedia, Society of Architectural Historians https://sah-archipedia.org/essays/TX-01-0002-0001-0006 History — City of Alamo Heights https://www.alamoheightstx.gov/about/history/ Case No. 914F, 231 Encino Ave, Significance Review — City of Alamo Heights, Community Development Services https://www.alamoheightstx.gov/wp-content/uploads/06.10.24-Action-Taken.pdf Home builder files plan to demolish 1922 Alamo Heights house — San Antonio Report https://sanantonioreport.org/alamo-heights-1922-house-demolition/ 100-year-old Alamo Heights has no historic districts. Some residents want to change that — San Antonio Report https://sanantonioreport.org/100-year-old-alamo-heights-has-no-historic-districts-some-residents-want-to-change-that/ Alamo Heights council votes on contentious demolition requests — San Antonio Report https://sanantonioreport.org/alamo-heights-city-council-demolition-requests/