Cortez Building
El edificio Cortez
Cortez Building
The Cortez Building is located on the northeast corner of North Mesa and Mills Avenue on San Jacinto Plaza in downtown El Paso. For more than seventy-five years it has served the city as a hotel, office building, and home to government agencies. It was originally built as a hotel on the plaza, the last of three hotels to occupy that site. In 1899, Mrs. Alzina DeGroff, a pioneer in the hotel business in El Paso, acquired the Vendome Hotel and renamed it the Hotel Orndorff after her first husband. She operated it for more than twenty-five years until 1924 when she borrowed 825,000 dollars and hired the renowned El Paso architectural firm Trost and Trost to design a new hotel. The Hotel Orndorff was demolished and a new Orndorff Hotel was constructed at the same site at a cost of more than 1.4 million dollars. Henry C. Trost, who dominated the architectural scene of the American Southwest for more than three decades, designed the building.
Report this entry
More from the same community-collection
El Paso Police officer Howell Cobb - 1904
Witness for the Defense: On the afternoon of January 15, 1904, ...
El Paso Police officer Tom Threepersons - 1921
On March 9, 1921, the El Paso Herald reported, "One Man is ...
El Paso Police Command Staff - 1975
Chief of Police Robert Minnie with staff in front of Liberty ...
El Paso Police Department - 1903
Top Row Left to Right: Chas McDonald, Will Rynerson, Jim Briggs, ...
El Paso Police K-9 handlers - 1975
El Paso Police officers Richard Edens and Marcos Payan were the ...
Tug of War in the Rio Grande - February 16, 1977
El Paso Police officer Tim Davidson managing to outwit the ...
Trolley in front of Gateway Hotel, 1960s
The image probably dates from the 1960s. It shows a trolley in ...
