Hip, Cantilevered Hotel Activates Historic Stretch of San Antonio River Walk

(Updated July 26 to identify Lake | Flato as the project's design architect, with Gensler serving as the architect of record).

To pinpoint the best rooms in a 20-story hotel, your eyes would likely scan up to the top of the tower. Sure, the views up there are great. But at the 195-room Canopy by Hilton perched on a tiny footprint in Alamo City, the most premium rooms lay low, floating just above the tranquil San Antonio River. Designed by Lake|Flato architects and Gensler, the historic-meets-hip property’s allure is all about access to the waterfront.

Nearly a decade ago, San Antonio developer, architect and interior designer Chris Hill identified an opportunity to beckon a big flag to a small site near some existing hospitality assets like his prohibition-era Esquire Tavern.

The challenge? Space on the river was hard to come by, and Hilton wanted nearly 200 rooms on the available 6,000 square feet of land. The site also happened to host its own historic landmark, the limestone-gilded Alamo Fish Market building still holding up from the days of the Civil War.

The city was craving increased density downtown, especially along the ever-popular River Walk. So the development team set out to erect a massive, modern asset that makes the most of the site’s speck of waterfront, all while tiptoeing around the lingering limestone to perfectly preserve the past.

“Along that whole strip of the river, especially on the south side of it, a lot of the buildings predated the River Walk,” explained Jim Shelton, a Gensler design director. “They were all focused toward Commerce Street and didn’t have a lot of activity on the riverside.”

The goal from day one, Shelton said, was to “refocus the orientation of the buildings to open up a new level of interaction with the river … but all within the property line.” The hotel opened in April 2021 with a floor area ratio (FAR) of 13.12 on its .14 acres of land.

Such dense usage wouldn't have been possible without creative design, Shelton said. With design architect Lake | Flato Architects heading up the scheme that devised a response to the river, Gensler — serving as the architect of record — was able to work with their team and general contractor Sundt to bring Hill's and client Chilton Restoration's vision for a better riverfront to life.

For starters, the team secured air rights over the Esquire to cantilever an amenity level with an outdoor bar that unleashes views up and down the river. Lake | Flato Co-Founder and Partner David Lake said the porch "feels like a treehouse." The 20-foot cantilever holds 5 levels of suites above it, he explained.

The team strategically positioned room types to put the most premium ones lower, with balconies that “canopy,” pun intended, just over the river and the cypress trees running along its bank.

Down one level from the hotel’s St. Mary’s Street entrance, at river level along the narrow waterfront, Gensler said the team “dynamically created volume by carving back the space” for the hotel’s indoor-outdoor Domingo restaurant and Otro bar. This unlocked an “open, welcoming public space” along the River Walk, which weaves through downtown via a small, celebrated path running atop the river’s low floodwall.

High above, another section of the building continues the project’s serendipitous “canopy” theme by cantilevering over the restaurant and shading it from San Antonio’s brutal summer sun.

The site mutually benefits the project and the public, Shelton said. “It's a bit aspirational of who we want to be in San Antonio,” he continued. “You don't have to build a ton of inwardly focused amenities if you have the river right there … which is a prime resource and amenity for us as a city.” What’s more, he continued, is what the project grants to the city’s river-lovers. “I don't think anyone would say that that part of the river is not better now than it was before.”

But bringing something new to a forgotten corner of the River Walk wouldn’t have been possible if the architects hadn’t worked with the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission (HDRC) to honor what had come before.

With historic features on the small site, the plans had to get past HDRC. “Instead of trying to save everything … we worked with HDRC to deem what was relevant … for a contextual and compatible response to what’s there while also looking toward the future.”

"We were able to work with the historic structures on the site without mocking them by doing an overly historicized response."

Jim Shelton, Gensler

The balance came in saving the façade of the Fish Market, which had since been used as the O’Connor & Sullivan bank starting in the late 1800s, and which, more recently, had long sat vacant. The building came down brick by brick, all while Lake | Flato and Gensler “took great care to catalog and document and restore” each one, Shelton said.

“We excavated and redid the foundations and then built our building around it.” The Canopy hotel, with a gross building area of 80,000 square feet, went up level by level into the skyline, and then the team carefully reinstalled the façade of the fish market “kind of inside” the new building’s lobby, Shelton said. “The interior finish of the lobby … along with north facade overlooking the River Walk … is all that pre-existing wall of the fish market.”

The excavation efforts unearthed a stone cistern that the team was able to repurpose as a cornerstone of the Domingo restaurant. “A lot of people think it's a pizza oven — but we were really careful to restore it and really make it a public piece."

By exposing, saving and using the “cool, significant parts that are key to the fabric of that part of the city,” Shelton said, “we were able to work with the historic structures on the site, without mocking them by doing an overly historicized response.”

"That view of the Aztec sign was probably the most Instagrammable shot in San Antonio. I think that shows that interesting spaces that are connected to a place get so much free publicity just by people wanting to be there and experiencing it and having fun."

Jim Shelton, Gensler

The interior design team, headed by Mark Zeff Design, made it “clear what is new and what is old,” he said. “It’s contextual and also a bit contemporary. It doesn’t all have to match — and I think that’s how downtown grows.”

Materials in the newer parts of the building nod to the color of steel on the bridges that hover over the winding river throughout downtown, for example. Limestone and concrete also play a prominent role.

On the St. Mary’s side of the building, views in prominent areas are geared toward other historic structures, such as the Aztec Theatre across the street. “That interior view with the Aztec sign was probably the most Instagrammable shot in San Antonio for a while,” he said. “I think that really shows that if you do interesting spaces that are connected to a place, you get so much free publicity just by people wanting to be there and experiencing it and having fun. That's like the best marketing you can get.”