After decades of decay, the iconic Stonewall Jackson Hotel is about to bear a Texas Historical Commission marker boasting San Benito’s storied architectural treasure as a state landmark.
In 2022, the historical commission designated the boarded-up, 98-year-old three-story Stonewall Jackson a Texas landmark after the San Benito Housing Authority applied for the designation more than 10 years after city officials condemned the building that stands as a monument to the city’s heyday as Cameron County’s agriculture hub.
“This 100-year-old building is the embodiment of our spirit — the Stonewall Jackson Hotel,” Sandra Tumberlinson, co-founder of the San Benito Historical Commission, said Friday during a ceremony unveiling the marker waiting to be installed at 220 E. Stenger St. “The memories we have of this hotel are in the thousands, and every family can tell stories of their association with the Stonewall. It has withstood many storms, depressions and changes — and it still stands.”
After city officials condemned the building housing low-rent apartments in 2012, the San Benito Housing Authority bought the Stonewall Jackson for $220,000.
For years, the agency considered multi-million dollar renovations while trying to sell the building.
When the housing authority contracted the architectural firm Megamorphosis Design in 2019, the firm estimated the cost of renovating the building at $6 million to $7 million, officials said at the time.
Following the coronavirus pandemic, materials’ prices drastically increased construction costs.
Now, estimates could range from $12 million to $14 million, City Commissioner Tom Goodman said.
“We want to be careful with what we do with the building,” he said. “It’s got such a remarkable history.”
When housing authority officials set out to apply for a historical marker as part of plan to sell the Stonewall Jackson in early 2022, they turned to Tumberlinson to write the application.
For eight months, she and attorney Buddy Dossett, a local historian, researched the building’s history, she said.
In late 2022, the historical commission designated the building a “recorded Texas historic landmark” as it began to work on the building’s historical marker.
For decades, the San Benito’s cherished landmark was worthy of a state historical marker.
But it took the housing authority to apply for the designation.
“I don’t know why nobody had applied,” Tumberlinson said. “It takes certain people with that interest to apply. It takes many years to complete the process. It takes a lot of research.”
Now, the housing authority is considering entering into a public-private partnership aimed at saving the 98-year-old building.
“There have been some investors looking into the building to see if we can rehabilitate the building,” Maricela Aguilar, the housing authority’s executive director, said, referring to two investors.
To help fund the project, officials are considering applying for grants, she said.
“It would be a project of the housing authority,” Aguilar said in an interview. “We’re looking at every angle that benefits San Benito housing, the city of San Benito and the building. We want to preserve its history. There’s a lot of memories in there. Our goal is to bring the building back to life.”
In the mid-1920s, local leaders hired architect Harvey P. Smith to design the building.
Opened in 1927, the grand hotel marked an era in which land barons courted northern businessmen who helped transform the city into an agricultural mecca.
The city’s leaders built the Stonewall Jackson as “a monument to the success of visionary people who harnessed the Rio Grande … to bring agriculture to the nation via a railroad that brought northern land seekers to this area and created the need for a magnificent place to stay,” Tumberlinson wrote in her application to the historical commission.
On Oct. 8, 1927, local leaders held the Stonewall Jackson’s grand opening.
“The town stepped out last night,” The Brownsville Herald wrote in the newspaper’s Oct. 9, 1927 edition. “It was a big night. You might say a night of nights. Dreams came true last night — hundreds of dreams, and San Benito will long remember.”
During the city’s heyday, the building stood as the area’s social hub.
In 1946, her parents, Raul and Celia Longoria, hosted their wedding reception on the hotel’s patio, Tumberlinson said.
“My parents had their wedding reception in the banquet hall and took their wedding portrait in the Spanish style patio in front of the beautiful masonry artwork,” she said during last week’s ceremony.
“I grew up hearing stories from my parents about weddings, parties and other functions at the hotel, and as I walked the lobby and patio during my research, I could see the unique tile work found in my parents wedding photos,” she said. “The magnificent Stonewall Jackson Hotel was the center of activity and entertainment for decades.”