After 90 Years, San Antonio City Hall Gets Overdue Renovation

At almost 90 years since the 1891 building was substantially renovated, AIA San Antonio announced “City Hall for All,” a design contest seeking an accessible solution for the east elevation of San Antonio’s City Hall.

According to Allison Chambers, AIA, of Ford, Powell & Carson Architects & Planners, “It was the saddest rabbit warren of offices you’ve ever seen in your life.” Over the years, beautiful open spaces with spaciously high ceilings had been subdivided into smaller and smaller office spaces as needs arose, with office windows being a low priority. Ceilings were dropped to a claustrophobic eight feet, and there was a hodgepodge of finishes from minor aesthetic updates in the 1980s and ’90s.

As just a first step, The ambitious 2017 contest sought to balance the standards of preservation with the goal of supporting equal opportunity and self-sufficiency for people with disabilities.

Beaty Palmer Architects won the contest with a simple design. Calling for the addition of two diagonal ramps that would preserve the look of the front of the building, their design allowed easy access for all. “We found a way to make it look seamless to an extent — I don’t want to say invisible — but that was the idea,” says Michael Beaty, AIA, a founding principal at the firm. 

“With our own trips to City Hall, everyone seems to arrive at the corners,” says Beaty. By building the ramps with the natural flow of site traffic, the team was able to propose a universal design — one that would work equally well for people with and without disabilities. 

On the preservation side of the project, the team discovered the original plaster ceilings, a treasure that had gone unseen for decades. It became a priority to highlight the historic architecture by cleverly hiding ductwork and other systems. 

Another goal substantial goal of the project was to give everyone in the building access to views and daylight. This would allow elected representatives to actually see the city they serve. Wow! What a concept.  

The renovation was completed in of May 2021, which was more than a year after it was scheduled to be completed which was driven by the pandemic and associated labor and material shortages.

According to Chambers their “goal is not to have these buildings be restored and sit as monuments to the past,” they “want them to be occupied and inhabited and used.”

The end result is a building that is as beautiful and functional on the inside as it already was on the outside.