The early 1900s structure at 836 S. Laredo St. was part of an area called “Laredito.” The city’s Historic and Design Review Commission last week voted 5-2 against the river authority’s proposal to demolish the circa-1890 A.W. Walter House.

SAN ANTONIO — A crumbling, 130-year-old house with ties to a pioneering Mexican American family-owned bottling company has been spared demolition — for now.

Officials with the San Antonio River Authority say the two-story house, a half-block from an uncompleted section of the San Pedro Creek Culture Park, is dangerous, with walls that could collapse.

But descendants of the Rodriguez-De Leon family see the decaying Victorian structure as a link to “Laredito” — an old neighborhood west of the creek, also once known as the Mexican Quarter or “Mexican downtown.”

Gina Velasquez has heard countless stories from her father and his three siblings about their childhood home at 836 S. Laredo St.

“When I close my eyes, I don’t see a long-forgotten, neglected beautiful piece of history,” said Velasquez, 53, who expects the house eventually will be razed. “I see the house as the heartbeat for a family. We always like to remember the best when something has to leave, so that’s what I’ll have to do.”

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But for now, the house will remain. The city’s Historic and Design Review Commission last week voted 5-2 against the river authority’s proposal to demolish the circa-1890 A.W. Walter House.

Pablo Garza, structural engineer with the river authority, told the commission the house “appears to be stable, but it’s not.” It has missing mortar, sagging or cascading masonry, cracks and movement in its load-bearing walls and at least one interior wall “in danger of collapse.” He has estimated it would cost $773,500 to repair and restore the structure.

The house at 836 S. Laredo Street appears in the left background of this circa-1920s photo of the workers at Rodriguez Bottling. A bottling factory stood just behind the house, which is west of San Pedro Creek.

“Very highly skilled artisans would have to be involved in the reconstruction of this building. Any vibratory movement, any kind of impact, any kind of sudden movements of this building could cause … localized and cascading failure throughout the building,” Garza said.

Nevertheless, the majority of the commissioners said they wanted more evidence to support the demolition request, such as engineering estimates that confirm there has been a loss of historic significance and that rehabilitation would be an economic hardship.

The river authority can appeal the denial to the Zoning Board of Adjustment or return to the commission with a modified demolition request.

SARA acquired the property in 1987 for an underground flood-control tunnel project, and the City Council approved a landmark designation for the house the following year. The property was conveyed in 1992 to the city, which returned it to the river authority in 2016 for the Culture Park project. Under a deed agreement, if the property is ever used for purposes unrelated to the Bexar County-funded creek improvement, the property would revert to the city.

“So we have not interpreted this as allowing us to have a lot of flexibility to expect any kind of reasonable return or any kind of potential partnership for other types of things” not connected to the creek, said Xochil Pena Rodriguez, attorney for SARA.

The river authority proposed razing the house and converting the tract at Laredo and Guadalupe streets to a parking lot for the river authority’s operations and maintenance staff, with green space buffers. A historically designated circa-1850 jacal, known as the Bergara-Le Compte House, at 149 Guadalupe St., would remain in place on the east end of the lot.

Lucia Rodriguez De Leon operated the Cinderella Beauty Shop from the house at 836 S. Laredo St., where she raised four children as a widow. She lived from 1909 to 1986 and still owned the house just west of San Pedro Creek when she died.

Commissioner Ann-Marie Grube, who voted against the proposal, asked why the Walter House wasn’t included in the creek project. Rodriguez said SARA studied possibilities for reusing the house or moving it, but determined it’s too fragile to restore or relocate.

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Grube suggested the city or SARA could’ve done more to save the house.

“Everybody’s just been handing down this building and nobody’s put any money into it,” she said. “I think there’s options for this building other than demolish (it).”

Commissioner Curtis Fish voted for demolition, saying, “structural failure in the brick is kind of beyond a reasonable state of rehabilitation and is tantamount to a loss of significance.”

For Velasquez, the house is full of family tales, including an American success story in Laredito, which was established by the 1800s but almost entirely erased with urban renewal and highway construction by the 1960s.

Her great-grandfather, Guadalupe Rodriguez Sr., a farmer born in Mexico in 1867, fled Pancho Villa’s revolution in 1912 and came to San Antonio, starting a plant that bottled Iron Beer, King-Kola and other popular soda drinks of the day.

He bought the Walter House in about 1918 and built a factory behind it. He and his son, Guadalupe Rodriguez Jr., ran Rodriguez Bottling. In a 1922 Spanish-language ad in La Prensa, the company touted itself as “exclusive bottlers of the famous ‘GRAPICO,’ the most perfect grape drink in the market.

“We sincerely request the patriotism of the great Mexican colony,” the ad said in Spanish.

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The A.W. Walter House at 836 S. Laredo St. is shown from the west, with the Rodriguez Bottling factory right behind it, in a circa-1920s photo.

Guadalupe Rodriguez Jr. and Herlinda Morales were married in Mexico in 1924. Rodriguez was fatally shot during a holdup in San Antonio in 1929. His widow took over the family's bottling company in the 1930s and became a pioneering figure in freight logistics and one of the first successful Latina businesswoman in the Southwest.

Gina Velasquez has kept some of the 1920s bottles from the family-owned bottling company started by her great-grandfather, Guadalupe Rodriguez Sr. The one with a label once contained Gold Cross Root Beer, a popular brand of the period.

SARA has proposed razing the house and converting the tract at Laredo and Guadalupe streets to a parking lot for the river authority’s operations and maintenance staff, with green space buffers. But the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission denied the proposal, saying they wanted more evidence to support the demolition request.

“The ad shows he was already championing for Laredito himself, asking the Mexican community to support Mexican industries,” Velasquez said.

But his son was fatally shot during a holdup in 1929. The elder Rodriguez died in 1933, and his widowed daughter-in-law, Herlinda Morales Rodriguez, took over the business, renaming it the Dragon Bottling Co. and becoming one of the first successful Latina businesswomen of the Southwest. Her legacy as a freight logistics pioneer earned her a page on the Handbook of Texas Online.

By 1939, Dragon Bottling was one of the most prosperous businesses owned by a Mexican American in the state, producing 120 cases of soft drinks in 12 different flavors per hour and using 12 trucks to deliver them within a 160-mile radius of San Antonio, according to the online history database. But by the 1960s, small bottlers had shut down amid competition from major distributors such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

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Velasquez said her grandmother, Lucia Rodriguez De Leon, lived in the house, where she ran the Cinderella Beauty Shop and raised four children as a widow. When she died in 1986, she had moved but still owned the house.

Family members have said the house was haunted, claiming a chair left at the top of the L-shaped stairway would always come tumbling down, as if pushed by some spectral force.

“My grandmother told me her eldest son as a baby would be crying upstairs,” Velasquez said. “He would be quieted by the time she got up there and the cradle would be rocking.”

On a more earthly plane, there were the stories from her father, uncle and two aunts about Laredito: a playground in front of their house; a nearby bakery that was a magnet for children in the area; the nightlife they observed from their porch, including fights at nearby bars spilling into the street; and the row houses across the street where other families lived.

Though resigned to the likelihood of demolition, Velasquez wants one thing for the house: “I want to give it a decent burial.”

Scott Huddleston is a veteran staff writer, covering Bexar County government, local history, preservation and the Alamo. He has been a reporter at the Express-News since 1985, covering a variety of issues, including public safety, criminal justice, flooding, transportation, military, water and the environment. He is a native Texan and longtime San Antonian.