Photo: Henry Bartell (“H.B.”) Zachry….Lone Star Flight Museum
After graduating from Uvalde High School with Honors in 1918, debater, footballer, baseballer and band member, H. B “Pat” Zachry was looking forward to using his scholarship by studying Animal Husbandry at Texas A&M University with the hopes of a career on the land.
However, World War 1 was coming to an end, and his preferred courses were not being offered at the college, and so he switched his attentions to civil engineering. He graduated in 1922, and was offered his first job in Panama working for the United States Geodetik Survey, but the move did not eventuate because he wanted to remain closer to his mother who was suffering health problems.
Instead, he accepted a role as a Webb County Surveyor because it was located closer to Laredo where his family had moved. His first job was to design a highway that provided access to an oilfield. However, he decided to branch out, he founded the H.B. Zachry Company in 1924, and successfully bid to construct the bridge that was needed on this highway.
From this humble start, the company he founded quickly became one of the largest and highly-respected engineering companies in Texas. The Zachry company became known not only for many more bridges, but also the design and construction of dams, power plants, thousands of miles of highways, pipelines, and airfields…even being responsible for the runways at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. As their reputation spread, so did the scope of their work and the Zachry Company completed many projects not only throughout Texas, but it also expanded into Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Peru and Spain. His company now employed over 12,000 personnel.
Photo: Zachry Corporation
A generous man, H.B. Zachry, known affectionately as “Mr Pat” donated millions of dollars to worthy causes, while requesting that he did this quietly and without fanfare. In 1972, his alma mater, Texas A & M, named their 4 story engineering complex in his honor, and it is known as the Zachry Engineering Center. There are also a number of schools named in his honor.
When San Antonio hosted the World’s Fair in 1968, he was serving as the chairman and the chief executive officer for “Hemisfair” and this provided an opportunity to not only put his company, but also San Antonio into the spotlight.
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, H. B. Zachry, adopted an idea from one of his employees Anastacio “Stacey ” Farias, and implemented an innovative plan to construct a 21 story, 496 room, palatial hotel on the San Antonio Riverwalk….and to do it in record time….to open in time for the World’s Fair.
Photo: Anastacio “Stacey” Farias…..George Farias
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.
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 !!
Today, the hotel stands as a proud monument of San Antonio innovation, and provides a wonderful opportunity to share this amazing story during an “Alamo City Walking Tour”
H. B. Zachry…”Mr Pat” passed away on this day in 1984, so on the 40th anniversary of his passing, we remember his immense contribution to the city, and his story is certainly one of wonderful “Memories of San Antonio”
Photo: H.B. “Pat” Zachry…K. Pinkney….Wordpress.com
Additional stories:
- When the original working drawings of the hotel were conceived, the name of the Palacio del Rio Hotel was “El Conquistador”
- In 1946, with the support of the then mayor Gus Mauermann, and to help alleviate the growing parking problem downtown, H.B. Zachry proposed the idea of construction of a 1,100 car garage under Travis Park, in a project designed by Atlee and Robert Ayres. The three story parking garage would also serve as a bomb shelter. However, Gus Mauermann was defeated at the next election, a lengthy lawsuit ensued, and the project never got off the ground….or in this case…under the ground ! There were also hopes of underground parking beneath Alamo Plaza and Main Plaza as well.
- Lewis F. Fisher in “Saving San Antonio” relates the tale from restauranteur Frank Phelps, telling the story that while the Hilton Palacio del Rio Hotel was under construction, H.B. Zachry went next door to the “Little Rhein Steakhouse” restaurant for lunch. At that time, pile drivers were pounding the land along the banks of the river, preparing the foundations of the new hotel. On that day, the vibrations from this construction work were so severe, it caused Mr Zachry’s plate of food to flip off the table and into his lap.
Photo: Best Steak Restaurants
Photo: Pinterest
Credits:
Saving San Antonio….Lewis F. Fisher
The Hilton Palacio del Rio….George Farias
San Antonio Express News
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