Cortez Hotel

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. Back in 1919, two men, Edwin C. Couch and Robert Reeves, founded the city of Weslaco.

Three years after that, Couch took a whole city block and deeded it over as a city park. Now, most folks might have left it at that. A nice patch of green, maybe a bench or two.

But this is the Rio Grande Valley, and civic pride has a way of dreaming bigger. Fast forward to 1928, and city officials had a different vision for that block. They hired an architect named Paul G.

Silber, out of San Antonio, working through his Argentum Development Corporation, and they told him to build a hotel. What Silber gave them was a four-story Spanish Colonial Revival structure, and it opened its doors on December 31, 1928. New Year's Eve.

Now, you want to talk about making an entrance. That ballroom started earning its keep right away. The Camarillo Dance Club, local service clubs, graduation ceremonies, political rallies.

If something mattered to Weslaco, it happened inside those walls. The business changed hands throughout the twentieth century, as things do. But here's what didn't change: the hotel is still standing.

Still a symbol, the marker says, of an era in Valley history marked by civic pride and community progress. Edwin Couch gave the city a block. The city turned it into a landmark.

That's how a place becomes a place.

What the marker says

Three years after Edwin C. Couch and Robert Reeves founded the city of Weslaco in 1919, Couch deeded this block as a city park. In 1928, city officials hired architect Paul G. Silber and his San Antonio Argentum Development Corporation to build a hotel here. The four-story Spanish Colonial Revival structure became a social center when it opened December 31, 1928. Groups such as the city's Camarillo Dance Club and local service clubs met in the hotel ballroom, which also served as the site of graduations and political rallies. The business changed hands throughout the 20th century, and today the hotel remains a symbol of an era in Valley history marked by civic pride and community progress. (2005)