Hot Wells (San Antonio, Texas)
Hot Wells was from 1894 to the early 1920s, a spa, hotel, bathhouse, and health resort along the San Antonio River in the southside of San Antonio, Texas. Plans are underway in 2015 to restore Hot Wells to the glamour of its heyday, when international visitors included U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and Porfirio Diaz, a president of Mexico.
History
A sulfur-laden artesian spring was found on the site in 1892. Two years later, a bathhouse and hotel followed under the direction of developer McClellan Shacklett. Hot Wells claimed its waters would benefit persons with diseases of the skin, liver, and kidney as well as those with rheumatism and even sepsis. Not long after the facility opened, fire destroyed the resort in December 1894, but Shacklett was financially unable to rebuild. Instead, a German immigrant Otto Koehler of Pearl Brewing Company, purchased the property and re-opened it in 1902 as a three-story brick building with eighty rooms. In the octagonal bathhouse, there were forty-five private baths in three pools. Koehler brought ostriches to the resort to provide guests with ostrich races. There were also domino parties, concerts, and lectures. Streetcars brought guests from downtown San Antonio. At its peak, Hot Wells was likened to other such resorts in Karlsbad, Germany and in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 1906, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team conducted its training camp there. A 1911 silent picture, The Fall of the Alamo, was filmed there. The resort attracted such celebrities as film director Cecil B. DeMille and actors Sarah Bernhardt, Tom Mix, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Rudolph Valentino.[1] Some celebrities came to Hot Wells in their own rail cars on a spur which served the resort.[2]
In time, the popularity of sulfur water cures waned. In 1923, Hot Wells was sold to a Christian Science group for the establishment of a school, which burned two years later. The facility became a tourist camp, trailer park, and a bar and restaurant before it faded away in the early 1970s. In 1984, the Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio determined that all which remained of the resort were remnants of the 1902 hotel, bathhouse ruins, and stones of a small nearby building.[1]
Planned restoration
San Antonio developer James Lifschutz, the owner of the property, has long proposed a pending restoration of Hot Wells. He donated twenty-one acres to the county for the project. In October 2015, the Bexar County Commissioners Court authorized the establishment of a new park at the site. The first phase of the project involves $4 million for lights, utilities, signs, preservation of the ruins, and connection to trails at the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River. The initial improvements will provide parking, road access from South Presa Street, gardens, and an outdoor classroom.[2]
A second round of improvements targeted at $2.3 million will add an aviary, more gardens, a greenhouse, interpretative center, stage, outdoor film screen, and office for the Hot Wells Conservancy. The north wing of the bathhouse will also be restored. There will be a system for harvesting rain water too. Former San Antonio Mayor Lila Cockrell, a member of the conservancy board, described the project as "a dream of so many people, for so many years."[2] Bexar Heritage and Parks Director Betty Bueche said that Hot Wells has "had a very magnificent history." She noted that postcards from the early days show a wrap-around porch at the guesthouse and tall trees including palms. The baths themselves could still be used as recently as 2004.[2]
Lifschutz earlier worked with the Edwards Aquifer Authority to cap the well, which once released 180,000 gallons of water daily. County Judge Nelson Wolff of Bexar County said, "Everybody's talked about trying to do something with Hot Wells, and it looks like we may get there".[2] Lifschutz describes Hot Wells as "a significant historic resource that kind of already belongs to the public in their hearts and minds, and I'm just pleased to make it official."[2]
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