‘A really big deal’: San Juan Hotel makes national endangered list

The historic San Juan Hotel is being recognized as one of the most endangered historic sites in the United States, according to a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation announced its 38th annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places on Wednesday. The list includes historic sites from throughout the country. The lone site to make the list from the Lone Star State was the San Juan Hotel.

“This is a really big deal,” Gabriel Ozuna, preservation chair of the Hidalgo County Historical Commission, said.

“The National Trust is the nation’s foremost preservation nonprofit, and we’re one of the most endangered places in the whole country,” he explained.

The listing comes less than a year after Preservation Texas announced the hotel in the 2024 edition of its Texas’s Most Endangered Places List. Ozuna said that the attention that the hotel is receiving from organizations outside of the region and state indicate the severity of the situation for local historical buildings.

“Our national preservation partners are trying to identify, support, and hopefully save our historic resources here in the Rio Grande Valley,” Ozuna said. “I just want to start by recognizing that this is a really positive development, and we’re really excited for what this means, not just for San Juan and Hidalgo County, but the region as a whole.”

The Hidalgo County Historical Commission submitted an application for the hotel to be included on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in October of last year.

It was not until Wednesday that it was formally announced that the San Juan Hotel met the qualifications needed to be included among the national list.

“Telling the full American story means looking back at some of our most violent and difficult chapters,” Carol Quillen, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said in a news release. “The San Juan Hotel must be saved so that we never forget ‘La Matanza,’ and so that the local community can have available the reconciliation and healing that saving the hotel can offer.”

The listing is the most recent development regarding the fate of the historic hotel following the San Juan City Commission’s decision to demolish the building. The decision came just a few months after the city purchased the hotel on Nov. 15, 2023.

During a meeting held in January 2024, ideas for the city’s downtown revitalization plan — which include a multipurpose meeting/conference/events center — were shared by Brian Godinez, principal and chief executive officer of ERO Architects. It was then that Godinez shared plans to demolish the building.

Since then, efforts have been made by the Hidalgo County Historical Commission and an advocacy group called “Save the San Juan Hotel Initiative” to try to convince the city to preserve the building and the complicated history that exists within its walls.

Dr. Stephanie Alvarez, a professor of Mexican-American studies at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, has become the face of preservation efforts for the hotel. She, along with Ozuna, has been vocal at city commission meetings and hosted numerous events throughout the county to raise awareness about the hotel’s history and build support to save the hotel.

She said that she hopes that the new listing will help people see the value in not only the San Juan Hotel, but other historical sites in the region that may also be at risk.

“I think people may not necessarily believe you,” Alvarez said. “When you have a national organization that this is what they are committed to — the only thing they do is historical preservation — say, ‘This is valuable. It’s valuable to your community, but it’s also valuable to the entire United States and in the construction of the historical narrative of the United States,’ that tells other people, ‘Oh, this is important.’”

Alvarez said that she hopes that the listing will prompt the city to take immediate action in preventing more deterioration from the building. She said that there is a very real danger that the hotel could be lost if preventative measures aren’t taken in the near future.

“In addition to requesting a meeting, the San Juan hotel initiative folks, along with Proyecto Azteca, have been asking for over a year to take immediate action to preserve the hotel in the form of boarding up windows, boarding out doors, putting a tarp on the roof to ensure that it does not deteriorate any further,” Alvarez said. “I hope that this will mobilize the city to take those actions immediately.”

San Juan Mayor Mario Garza chose not to comment on the hotel’s endangered listing, but he said that he is open to the idea of allowing the community to decide on the hotel’s future.

“That’s something that I would have to get with legal and figure this out if it’s even possible, if we can have our community come out and basically have a workshop and just kind of hear both sides out,” Garza said. “This is my take on it. I’d rather just leave it up to our citizens and let them decide what they want to do with it. Or if that nonprofit wants to come in and purchase it and for them to save it, I have no problem with that as well. But I’m speaking on my behalf. I can’t speak for the rest of the commission.”

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