Legacy of a landmark: Elegant downtown structure reveals its secrets

BROWNSVILLE — The rustic yet elegant brick archways of the old building on Washington Street reflect a little bit of New Orleans, the mark of builders who decades ago left their imprint on Brownsville’s city core.

"There were a lot of architects coming in to the lower river area, and it’s intriguing irrespective of where they came from, that they often adapted to this local way of doing things," said Stephen Fox, architectural historian at Rice University in Houston.

The site, at 1115 Washington St., has a fascinating role in the Wild West ethos of the area, and despite conflicting stories about the current building’s history and use over the years, its charm and strength as an 1882 architectural landmark endure. It also provides a bridge, of sorts, an artistic fusion of Mexican border and New Orleanian cultures.

The building’s details speak volumes. An open atrium once illuminated the inner courtyard. That courtyard, complete with a cistern fed by seasonal rains, hails from the area’s close ties to Mexican architecture. Born of necessity more than aesthetics, the cistern supplied residents with drinking water, while a small cellar served as storage. Today, it invokes rumors of underground tunnels used to smuggle arms and liquor.

The structure, which was built by Jose Fernandez, a wealthy Spaniard who purchased the lot, faces Market Square, where early residents gathered daily to purchase food and wares. Fernandez, according to his great-grandson, Eugene Fernandez, tore down the old building and built the current structure before moving back to his coffee plantantion in Veracruz, Mexico.

Eugene Fernandez, 60, a Brownsville businessman, said his great-grandfather built the structure first as his own Brownsville residence.

"His intention was to of course take over that plantation in Veracruz, and that was his primary residence," said Fernandez, who refers to his cousin, renowned historian A.A. Champion, for much of his information.

"He had this building up here as his Brownsville residence," Fernandez says, "but that building (on Washington Street) was later occupied by his son-in-law, who married his daughter Serafina, and that was Joe Celaya. Joe Celaya was one of the heavies for the railroad here. They didn’t have a Brownsville residence, so my great-grandfather had to have residences for all his children."

Historian Fox, who also is a Fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas, firmly believes the structure was a hotel. Maps dated 1885 and 1894, on file at the Market Square Research Center in the Brownsville Historical Complex, indicate the bbuilding at one point was the Rio Grande Hotel and that it eventually was closed down, but no one seems to know who owned the hotel or why it closed.

Regardless of its original purpose, we do know that the building later served as the Olvera Shoe Repair Shop and now is being renovated by the Olvera family.

CULTURAL FUSION

The architects who landed in the area during 19th century left their New Orleans flare on the buildings of Brownsville and Matamoros, Fox said. That Louisiana influence can be seen in the double doors that still grace the structure on Washington Street, and in the twisted iron jutting from the feet of those doors as wistful reminders of the graceful balconies that once adorned the façade.

Interwoven with the New Orleans flare is the border-specific brickwork, which fused numerous techniques into a regional style, said Fox, who has written extensively about Brownsville architecture.

"You can see that there’s strong connections between the buildings of the French Quarter in New Orleans and those of Matamoros, and it gets transmitted to Brownsville and upriver," he said. "It is based ultimately on Mexican vernacular architecture, but it is, in this case, a sort of New Orleanean Creole twist that again is very distinctive, really, just to the border area between Texas and Tamaulipas.

"It’s a combination of traditional Mexican architectures, but what was distinctive about Matamoros was its trade connections with New Orleans as a seaport." Fox said. "And a lot of the building professionals who came to Matamoros, say between the 1820s and the 1860s, came from New Orleans."

French and Spanish influences came together during the late 18

"The similarities between New Orleanian architecture, particularly the early 19

The atrium of the Washington Street building is characteristic of the structure’s Mexican parentage, Fox said, but a characteristic of the New Orleans style is the "entablature" of bricks radiating diagonally from the tops of the second floor windows.

"What is distinctive about it is that the entablature does not go all the way to the edge of the building," he said. "It sort of stops just before it gets to the edge. And that is something one does see in New Orleanean buildings from the 1820s to the 1860s; it’s a detail that’s absolutely pervasive in Matamoros and, again, spreading to Brownsville and other cities influenced by it."

THE CISTERN

While many of the structure’s adornments are based in architectural tastes, other interesting elements like the cistern have more practical purpose. Eugene Fernandez, a local businessman, said most if not all of the larger homes built in that period had cisterns because water was so scarce at certain times of the year.

Gutters ran around the periphery of the roof and emptied into downspouts that extended to ground level. A sluice valve, Fernandez said, could be turned to the right to divert water onto the lawn and to the left to direct it into the cistern for drinking water.

"At the first part of the rain, somebody would scurry over and say, ‘Hey! Switch the cistern drain!’ and then it would divert it once the roofs were washed off of all the bird droppings and all of that," he said. "It was a precious little maneuver that they used to do all the time. A lot of that was pretty clean, but people’s immunities back in those days were a lot different from ours now. They made a habit of always having a kettle on the hearth there with boiled water in it."

Residents would retrieve water from the cistern by using a hand-cranked pump that had a piston with a leather stopper to siphon water into a chamber.

Bob Vezzetti, former president of the Brownsville Historical Association, said local cisterns were beautifully made.

"There’s brickwork around it," he said. "The brick is incredibly well done. And all those bricks would have been made locally. When brick was available here it wouldn’t pay to haul it in from some place upstate."

Vezzetti said there were a number of brickyards along the Rio Grande.

"A lot were made in the various ranches during the slow season," he said. "The ranchers would put their men to work digging clay out of the river and firing it into brick."

THE CELLAR

One unusual feature for South Texas is the cellar, which Vezetti believes could have been used to store just about anything.

"Not so much foodstuff, because although that would keep foodstuffs cooler, the temperature in this area was such that food would not keep very long," he said. "Traditionally, basements have been used to store potatoes, because basements are damp, and cooler, so maybe hang meat or store potatoes, but certainly other kinds of supplies I think. It’s all supposition, it’s all guessing."

Fernandez said the cellar is actually more of a crawl space.

"It was extremely cramped," he said. "You couldn’t have a full-on cellar in those days because the water table was too high. All of that was warehousing storage," he said.

If the Fernandez family did store potatoes or other foods in the cellar, those items probably came from Market Square across the street. A bell would ring at 4 a.m. to alert everyone the market was open to sell vegetables, beef, geese, venison, spices such as comino and pepper, and just about anything else area residents needed.

"Produce would be brought in from around the countryside," Vezzetti said. "There was a place to slaughter cattle just a few blocks away, and the fresh meat would be hung in the marketplace."

KEY LOCATION

The Fernandez and Celaya families were not the only ones to occupy the site at Market Square.

"It was primarily built as a residence," Eugene Fernandez said, "but the way the old Spanish families did it back in those days was, they built a store down on the first floor and they had their residences on top. There’s pretty much a chance that there was a store there. I can’t say that I’ve even known that a store was there, but I have a feeling that it was used for retail space."

His great-grandfather José had built the structure on the site of a coffee house, he said, and that shop was the setting for an incident in 1859 that sparked the capture of Brownsville by Juan Cortina, a controversial and legendary local figure. Some people view him as a cattle rustler and bandit, while others revere him as a folk hero who defended Mexican-American land rights against Anglo oppression.

As the story goes, the owner of the shop, Gabriella Catzell, had summoned the marshal to deal with a man who was drunk and creating a disturbance.

"The marshal came in to arrest that disturbing party when Juan Cortina was riding by and he saw the marshal struggling with that guy, because the guy was drunk," Fernandez said.

He could not not say with certainty the source of his information, but was 100 percent sure of it’s accuracy.

"Juan Cortina got the impression this was some kind of a racist thing, because the guy who was drunk was a ranch hand for Cortina," he said.

The ranch hand was employed by the Cavazos family, of which Cortina was a member. It seems Cortina shot the marshal in the shoulder, then pulled the ranch hand onto his horse and rode off to the ranch. A couple of months later, Cortina and his forces captured Brownsville.

"It all started right there," Fernandez said.

THE PAST AS PROLOGUE

The brick building at 1115 Washington holds many stories, of shootouts and sieges, of coffee brewing for thirsty travelers, of bells summoning shoppers to linger within the old courtyard, and of Brownsville’s rich and colorful political history.

With its current renovation, the building’s textures promise to live on through the Olvera’s family’s plans. Victor Olvera Sr. rented the building in the 1920s to operate his shoe business, and later purchased the property. He died in 1973 and his son Victor Jr. took over. The younger Victor’s son Michael then took over the business.

The upstairs was heavily damaged by fire in the 1990s, but Michael Olvera continued doing business downstairs until moving the business to its current location on Boca Chica Boulevard.

Now, Victor Olvera’s son Rolando Olvera Sr. (father of Cameron County District Judge Rolando Olvera Jr.) is renovating the structure, clearing away damage from the fire and years of wear.

"Hopefully, one day, I can get a business, a restaurant or a nice bar or whatever," said Olvera, a pharmacist who co-owns Hector’s Professional Pharmacy on International Boulevard.

He pointed to where the uprooted floor reveals the cellar.

"I remember I used to go down there with my dad," he said. "It was used for storage. It would make a good wine cellar."

th century when New Orleans was under Spanish rule. th century, and Mexican architecture is really because of this common Spanish heritage …" he said.