The Menger Hotel

You're beside the Alamo, and the grand building next to the old mission is the Menger Hotel. It opened in February 1859. Look at how close it sits to the Alamo's walls. That closeness is where this story starts.

This ground was part of the Alamo's battlefield. Nineteen years after the fighting, in 1855, a German immigrant named William Menger opened a brewery on it, on what is now Alamo Plaza.

Menger had come to America in 1847, trained as a cooper and a brewer, and settled in San Antonio. He brought beer to a town with few breweries, and most accommodations were boarding houses. His brewery grew so popular that the plans for a hotel arose from it. The hotel didn't begin with a grand vision. It began with a crowd at the bar.

You've walked a few steps from the Alamo church, and the long building beside it on Alamo Plaza is the Menger Hotel. Look at that front wall, right next to the old mission. The closeness is the point. This hotel stands on ground that was part of the Alamo battlefield in 1836, where the defenders and the Mexican soldiers who attacked them died. Everything built here since was built on that ground.

The Menger's ghost stories are famous. Tours talk about Teddy Roosevelt, and about a maid named Sallie White. Staff and visitors tell those tales, but there's no record that proves a ghost. The story underneath is better, and it belongs to a woman most visitors never hear about: Mary Menger.

Mary and her husband William opened the hotel in February 1859.