Historical Marker
Alta Vista Hotel, Site of
Corpus Christi, Nueces County · Texas
Erected 1985
The architect was in his mid-twenties. James Riely Gordon, born in Winchester, Virginia, in 1863 and raised in San Antonio, was supervising his first big federal job, the San Antonio courthouse and post office, when Ropes hired him. The hotel was never his best-known work. That came later: the Texas Building at the 1893 Chicago fair, at least eighteen Texas courthouses and the Arizona Capitol. A grand Corpus Christi house he drew for Henrietta King has also been demolished. Gordon moved his practice to New York in 1903 and died there in 1937.
What the plaque says
Alta Vista Hotel, Site of Colonel Elihu Harrison Ropes (1845-1898) came to Corpus Christi in 1888 with grand ideas for the town's development and promotion. With financial backing from eastern investors, he sought to make Corpus Christi a deepwater port, to build a railroad between the port and the lower Rio Grande Valley, and to develop a large suburb three miles south of what was then the city limit. Within about five years, his eastern investors withdrew their support, and Ropes left Corpus Christi having attained few of his goals. The Alta Vista Hotel, once located on the adjacent property, was a part of Ropes' plan for development of his suburb, known as the Cliffs. He acquired the land in 1888 and hired young San Antonio architect James Riely Gordon to design the hotel. The Alta Vista was a three story frame building with 106 guest rooms. The hotel was completed about 1893 but did not open for business because of Ropes' departure from the city. The Alta Vista was operated briefly as a hotel during the early 1900's under the direction of J.J. Copley and the Alta Vista Hotel Co. Later abandoned, the hotel burned on June 9, 1927. Although the landmark is gone, its history is a reminder of the dreams that early promoters such as E.H. Ropes had for the city. (1985)
Where it stands
27.76032, -97.37936 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Mirador de la Flor — 2.6 miCorpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
- Art Museum of South Texas — 3.6 miPhilip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
- Texas State Aquarium — 3.8 miA nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
- USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 3.8 miAn Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.