Reporter's Notebook: Exploring Hotel Emma's history

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Courtesy of Stephen Alesch for Roman and Williams

A rendering of Sternewirth Bar, which will be featured on the ground floor of Hotel Emma.

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Stephanie Guzman

Reporter- San Antonio Business Journal

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One of the things I love about San Antonio is all its old and historic buildings. From where I grew up in Southern California, most of our oldest structures are farmhouses from the early 1900s. It was rare to see a huge building from that time period, as Ventura County didn't see its population boom until after World War II.

So to work at the historic Pearl Brewery — San Antonio Business Journal's offices are at Pearl's Full Goods Building — is a real treat. Almost every day I walk by Pearl Stables with the year 1894 proudly displayed.

As a history buff, I love looking at an old buildings and pondering the people that once inhabited them. Jeffrey Fetzer, the preservation architect for Pearl Brewery, is the same way.

We're the type of people who get excited about hidden pocket doors and yes — original archways. Fetzer said he found amazing architectural elements while building Hotel Emma.

"We found artifacts and interesting details during early construction" of Hotel Emma, Fetzer said. "We found an archway between buildings that had been covered up for decades."

You can read my interview with Fetzer here.

Part of Fetzer's job was to ensure the needs of Hotel Emma's future guests didn't trump the integrity of the original brewing building. In order to do that, Silver Ventures, Hotel Emma's developer, hired an industrial historian to document the building's brewing process. The historian also identified the brewery's parts that were valuable and could be salvaged to incorporate into the hotel's design.

Stephanie Guzman covers real estate and retail for the newspaper.