On April 1st, 1968, 5 days ahead of it’s ambitious schedule, history was made when the Hilton “Palacio del Rio” Hotel was officially opened on the san Antonio Riverwalk. An engineering marvel, it was the brainchild of H.B Zachry, the San Antonio building magnate, and broke all the “rules” of modern day construction, in order to achieve a seemingly impossible goal.
H.B Zachry Photo: K. Pinckney — Word Press.com
When the Bureau International des Expositions awarded HemisFair ’68 with official Fair status in 1965, the race was on to provide accommodation for the millions of attendees to the World’s Fair in San Antonio. Hotel rooms were desperately needed.
The head of the local construction company bearing his name, Henry Bartell Zachry, came up with an innovative plan to construct a 21 story, 496 room, palatial hotel on the San Antonio Riverwalk….and to do it in record time.
Traditional construction methods would never have allowed the hotel to be completed in the short time before the influx of visitors to the opening of the World’s Fair.
Photo: San Antonio Express news
H.B. Zachry put his 17 acre engineering plant, located 7 miles outside San Antonio, to work. On what could be described as a “conveyor belt of construction”, monolithic modular concrete rooms were cast, and each was completed at the engineering site. The rooms, or as some called them, “people boxes”, weighed 35 tons each. All rooms were 9’ high, 13’ across, and 30’ or 33’ long, so as to provide a “staggered” profile on the building.
Each room was fitted out at ground level. Carpet was laid, and the 5 different interior decors contained beds, tables, chairs, sideboards, lamps, radios, television sets, pictures on the walls, towels on the towel rails, and soap in the soap dishes. Some rooms were interconnected to form a suite, featuring a built-in bar.
Work also began on the riverside construction site, with 3 shifts, made up of sometimes 400 workers, and continuing around the clock to complete the task and to prepare for the arrival of the modular rooms. The first four floors of the building were constructed according to regular methods onsite, and that included the elevator shafts, the pool, the restaurant and conference rooms.
Photo: Pinterest
Meanwhile, 7 miles away, the rooms were loaded onto the back of flatbed trucks, and one by one, driven into the city where a specially-built crane was waiting to lift each room to the assigned floor of the hotel building
H. B. Zachry and his wife Mollie, created history on November 3rd 1967, when they became the first people to “ride” their room into a hotel, as room #522 was lifted into place by a massive, specially-built crane. The crews became so proficient at the room lifting, that a record was set by “stacking” 35 rooms in a single day.
Photo: UTSA Digital Collections
Photo: Zachry Construction
On December 20th 1967, the final room was hoisted into place, and to celebrate the momentous event, H.B. Zachry, once again, rode the room into its position to celebrate the event. The hotel set records by being the highest, and most luxurious pre-fabricated structure, as well as achieving the fastest time for constructing a building of this type. It took a record-breaking 202 working days to complete the hotel’s construction…..a little over 7 months !!
On April 1st 1968, pioneering hotelier Conrad Hilton, flew to San Antonio to celebrate the hotel’s grand opening. There was a flag raising ceremony, a traditional ribbon-cutting, followed by a luncheon, a cocktail party and a black-tie dinner dance. Also, at Conrad t Hilton’s request, the Archbishop of San Antonio, Robert E. Lucey, blessed the hotel building.
Photo: UTSA Digital Collections
The Hilton “Palacio del Rio”….”The Palace of the River”…a modern day construction marvel. This is an earlier photo of the San Antonio Riverwalk at this location . . .
Photo: Pinterest
…which now looks like this.
Photo: Author’s photo
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Memories of San Antonio 