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
James P. Mills, father of Anson Mills
James P. Mills was born in 1808 in Pennsylvania. He became an ...
Ben Williams - El Paso Lawman - El Paso, Texas
Ben Williams operated the Ben Williams Detective Agency in El ...
Capt. John Hughes-Texas Ranger - El Paso, Texas
In 1886 several horses were stolen from his and neighboring ...
Maud Austion Crouse,El Paso Texas circa 1915
Maud Austion was the wife of Hugh Crouse, a doctor in El Paso, ...
Louise Austin - Mrs. James S. Marr
Wife of Col. James Marr, who was the founder of El Paso Transfer ...
Jose Antonio Escajeda - San Elizario, TX
José Antonio Escajeda was part of an early El Paso pioneer ...
Florence Vilas, Ada Lyons, Kate McGhee - El Paso, Texas
From left to right: Florence Vilas, Ada Lyons, and Kate McGee. ...
