San Antonio architect Irby Hightower has long admired the Tower Life building from afar.
The senior principal with Alamo Architects even went so far as to build his own home on a lot with a view of the landmark skyscraper built in 1929.
Developer Ed Cross also appreciated the 31-story tower so much that he made regular offers to buy the building starting in 2009.
Twelve years later, with McCombs Enterprises and real estate investor Jon Wiegand, Cross succeeded and closed on the property at 310 S. St. Mary’s St. in May 2022.
Now with new owners who are intent on ushering the building into its next century of life, and with Hightower on the team, the Tower Life is about to undergo the most significant transformation in its long history.
In June, crews will begin the work to convert the office building into a 244-unit residential tower with food and beverage spaces at street level and along the River Walk. The last tenants will move out by May, Cross said.
That the building was originally designed with its back to what was once a flood-prone ditch at worst and an eyesore at best, is just one of the multitude of challenges the effort presents.
“I joke that I’m the dog that chased the car and caught the 18-wheeler,” Cross said of the enormity of the project. But, “we’re having a lot of fun with it.”
Designed by noted architect Atlee B. Ayres and built on the eve of the Great Depression, the Gothic Revival building was the tallest in San Antonio until the Tower of the Americas was built in 1968.
Its earliest occupant was a Sears department store, which operated for 10 years on the first six floors, according to a National Register of Historic Places document. Above that, the tower, with its eight stone gargoyles that are each 6 feet in length, had a bank of six elevators and office space.
In those days, guests of the adjacent Plaza Hotel, now Granada Homes, could enter the flagship department store through a tunnel beneath St. Mary’s Street to shop or visit the store’s cafeteria, lounges and barbershop.
The first section of the River Walk was completed in 1941.
The building later underwent modifications to house a TV station, an insurance company and the city’s transit agency. It also got air conditioning and a fire suppression system. The building’s most recent and longest-term owner was the construction firm founder H.B. Zachry and his family.
The Zachrys took impeccable care of Tower Life up to the day their 78 years of ownership ended, according to Cross.
But with the building’s use changing from office to residential, the new owners are required to entirely upgrade the building’s systems — from plumbing and safety to accessibility — and create spaces that meet the standards and expectations of today’s renter.
Cross said the team had to find space within the structure and work around its numerous support columns, for an additional fire stair and a garbage disposal chute, and an efficient way to run the amount of plumbing needed for all the units.
But losing space to required systems means giving up rentable square footage, Cross said. That meant they also had to find the most efficient way to lay out the apartments.
In the case of the Tower Life, that challenge led to unique results, Hightower said.
“You get two radically different extremes of how you normally lay out apartment buildings today,” he said.
The first six floors of the building where the Sears store was located have high ceilings and will be turned into urban loft apartments, Hightower said. Rows of windows provide lots of natural light in each unit except in one section where a light well is planned for that purpose.
In the octagonal tower, where each floor differs in size, there will be no long and narrow, “shoebox” shaped, apartments like those found in most new-build residential towers. Instead, the units will spread out like a fan to a wall of windows with panoramic views.
An amenity floor is planned where the tower sits on top of the main structure. Cross said the 7th-floor outdoor space will have a pool and outdoor seating areas.
The views of San Antonio from that level are superseded only by those from the observation deck, just below the flagpole, where city streets appear to radiate outward from the Tower Life.
Another major change to the building includes opening the flood-proof walls to the River Walk and developing spaces for restaurants that Cross said he plans to have open at the same time as the apartments.
Hightower said the shop windows under the awning along South St. Mary’s Street will be restored. Hundreds of brass door fixtures designed for the building when it was known as the Smith-Young Tower, stored in a box in the basement, will be reinstalled.
The building could also get a new name, Cross said.
What won’t change during the massive renovation project is the exterior of the historic brick building and its Gothic stonework and green-tiled roof, nor the glamorous lobby, with its gold ceilings and inlaid medallions, ornamental brass fixtures and double doors, and gleaming marble walls.
Also standing the test of time is the observation deck graffiti — some with pledges of affection carved into the copper edging through the years: Tony Cruz loves Rose Mary Ramirez, Oct. 1, 1955.
The conversion project is expected to last almost two years.
