KENS 5 is taking a deep dive into the unique history of the Menger Hotel, which reflects the history of downtown San Antonio itself.
SAN ANTONIO — The Alamo brings in more than 1.5 million visitors every year, making it the biggest attraction in the state of Texas.
And with tourism, comes the need for a place to stay.
And lucky for Alamo-goers, there’s a hotel right next door that might be equally as interesting.
A place people have been visiting for more than 150 years.
“The Menger Hotel is the oldest operating hotel in the state of Texas.”
Garvin O’Neil, the general manager of the Menger Hotel, is putting it modestly. The Menger isn’t just the oldest in the Lone Star State, but older than any hotel west of the Mississippi.
“It’s just so fun to interact with guests that come to the hotel and they’ll be in their 70s or 80s and say, ‘we spent our wedding night here,'” O’Neil said.
This hotel that screams San Antonio history was built in 1859 by William and Mary Menger.
“The hotel is named after William Menger, who came from Germany to Texas, and San Antonio in the late 1840s, and he was the first beer brewer in the state,” O’Neil said. “So Menger Beer was the first commercial beer brewed in the state of Texas. And he was successful at it. He didn’t really want to run a tavern, but he found that the demand for his beer in a tavern was greater than his demand for buying beer in barrels. So he opened the tavern.”
With San Antonio being such a frontier town at the time and not a lot of places for people to stay, a lot of people would imbibe in his tavern and spend the night there.
“So his girlfriend ran a boarding house and he and his girlfriend thought, ‘why don’t we build a boarding house next to the tavern?'” O’Neil said.
That boarding house quickly became much bigger and much more successful than the Mengers ever imagined.
Seeing its success, William now had a bigger vision.
“And he petitioned the city in the late 1850s to build a full-service hotel right here on this site,” O’Neil said.
And the rest, as historians say, is history.
The hotel started off as a two-story fifty-room hotel.
What started as a brewery business quickly became one of the hottest attractions in San Antonio.
“The brewery business took a back seat pretty much after the hotel opened very successfully,” O’Neil said.
And with success comes expansion.
“Quickly, they added a third story and very quickly after that they took the hotel and put an extension all the way back and it was well over 100 rooms by the late 1800s,” O’Neil said.
In 1871, William passed away, leaving the hotel to his wife and son to continue to run.
10 years later, the hotel was sold to Major J.H. Kampmann, who actually was the architect and builder of the hotel. Kampmann ran and owned the hotel until the 1920s.
Part of his contribution includes adding a three-story addition to the north and east wing.
He also added what came to be known as the Menger Bar.
The bar was originally built as a copy of ‘The House of Lords Pub’ in London, England.
Now on the newer side of the hotel, this bar is a time capsule of early San Antonio.
Step inside, and you can almost picture a cowboy strolling in, spurs clicking on the floor.
And one cowboy whose spurs you could’ve heard clicking was the King of the Cowboys.
“Roy Rogers was here every year because he was doing an event with the city,” O’Neil said. “And he brought Trigger and he and we have a Roy Rogers Suite in his memory.”
Another famous guest?
“Teddy Roosevelt, who virtually lived at the Menger Bar for months at a time before the Spanish American War, recruiting Rough Riders,” O’Neil said.
In 1909, Noted architect Alfred Giles added an ornamental marquee to the exterior and the original lobby received a new marble floor and Renaissance-revival style details.
But even hotels as successful as the Menger go through some rough patches.
“It fell into a little bit of disrepair from the Depression era and after World War II,” O’Neil said.
Unable to see such a storied hotel fall apart, the Moody family out of Galveston bought the hotel in the 1940s and have been the owners ever since.
In 1949, a new lobby, along with four stories and 125 rooms, were added to the hotel, making it more recognizable to how it looks now.
And in 1989, they were added to a prestigious list: as they became members of the Historic Hotels of America.
“It’s an important collection and I’m a hotel guy,” O’Neil said. “So you tell me a city, I’ll tell you a historic hotel. For example, if you go to New York City, the kids will want to go to Empire State Building I want to go to the Waldorf Astoria. So, it’s important there are some great old hotels that, they’re probably 50 stately historic hotels that have the same sense of the Menger where they keep the hotel up, but they keep it rooted in their history, and they make it look like it’s been for 100 years. So you get the same feel. […] We have a lot of clients that travel the country and they base their travel on what hotel they’re going.
And for some people, they base where they travel based on how spooky the place is.
And this hotel, is as spooky as it gets.
Throughout the years this hotel has been in operation, there’s always one question on everyone’s minds.
“Is the Menger haunted?” O’Neil said. “In a simple answer? Probably.”
You heard it here first, if you check in to The Menger Hotel, you might have an unlikely roommate.
“The paranormal is if it’s real, it’s probably real here,” O’Neil said.
But this roommate might even clean after itself.
“But I have been told, and I’ve heard nothing to the contrary, that all the ghosts are friendly,” O’Neil said. “So people shouldn’t worry about it. I’ve not had someone come down the hallway screaming to check out the hotel because some ghost chased them with the Phantom knife or anything.”
One of the friendly ghosts?
“Richard King of the famous King Ranch,” O’Neil said. “That was the biggest ranch in the world in the 1800s that stretched from south of Corpus Christi all the way down to the border of Mexico. And it was a combination of agriculture, rice and cattle. And it was a frontier. So Richard King stayed at The Menger when he had to come to town to do his banking and do his lawyering and all that. And he would stay a month at a time. […] And as he got older, he came to see his doctors and he was here for an extended time and he was dealing with a serious illness. And he passed away in the hotel. And the bed, he passed away in we still have. And it’s part of the Richard King suite.”
And most visitors want to meet Richard themselves.
“It’s the most requested room in the hotel,” O’Neil said. “The stories, you know, if you believe them, he said comes to visit people while they’re sleeping in the bed. He comes to visit them.”
The world-famous stories don’t stop at celebrities.
“We had a housekeeper, room attendant in the late 1800s named Sally White,” O’Neil said. “And Sally White lived in a boarding house up Blum Street, about three or four blocks away. [She] got into a fight with her husband, and he shot her. And he shot her a couple times and she came to the Menger wounded. […] And Mary Menger at the time took her in the room and they try brought doctors in to try to, you know, revive her and save her and they couldn’t and she passed away, and Mary Menger paid for all the funeral expenses and so Sally White, in her Victorian housekeeping uniform with a bonnet, is seen by lots of guests carrying linen down the hallway.”
One artist, Leonora Volpe, could see the ghosts so vividly, she put them on canvases.
But the Menger Hotel is a lot more than just a hotel full of friendly ghosts which is why they recently received a much-deserved renovation.
And it started with the hotel’s famous neighbor.
“The Alamo is going through a $500 million renovation of the whole Alamo site to make it an international tourist destination,” O’Neil said. “We’re very excited about the plans.”
The first phase has just been completed with the new Plaza de Valero site right in front of the hotel.
But even before the recent renovations, there was something about this place that kept people coming back.
“I had one guest say ‘if we come and stay with you for our 50th anniversary, will you charge us what you charged us 50 years ago when we checked in?'” O’Neil said. And I said I’d absolutely do that. I think the rate was $14.00.”
$14 for a historic and unique experience that is priceless for visitors.
“And you walk into the Menger and it’s completely unique,” O’Neil said. “And it has a history that speaks to you when you’re walking around. And you glean from it and you get a sense of it, I walked the floors and I see heirlooms as pieces of furniture that are on the hallways. And you know, those heirlooms were bought five years ago. And kind of made to look antique, but they were freshly made, and they were bought in the 1800s. And then you talk about the different people that are staying here in the stories about it.”
And just working here, for O’Neill, is a dream come true.
“And then even better is you’ll be working and someone will knock on my office door and tell you about when they stayed here as a kid,” O’Neil said. “And why they’re back and how special it is and you don’t get that in every hotel.”
So whether you’re staying in a haunted suite or saying “I do” here, The Menger Hotel will definitely make an impact on you.
And no matter what the impact, friendly or memorable, it’ll make you want to come back for another stay.