Aztec Theatre

In 1925 eight San Antonio businessmen, led by William Epstein, formed the Commerce Realty Company to build a movie palace downtown. The Kelwood Company supplied its principal architect, Robert B. Kelly, and a design team under R.O. Koenig traveled to Mexico, where they spent months sketching sculpture and buildings at Yaxchilan, Palenque, Monte Alban, Mitla, Chichen Itza, Uxmal and other sites. The National Register nomination notes that the result is an abstraction of Mesoamerican forms, not a copy of any one culture. The name came from an earlier Aztec Theater in Eagle Pass, borrowed with that city's approval.

The Aztec opened on June 4, 1926, on North St. Mary's Street. About 3,000 people saw the feature Other Women's Husbands and a stage revue called The Court of Montezuma, and another 5,000 were reportedly turned away. Local artists did much of the interior: Herbert Bernard designed the fire curtain and Henry Wedemeyer carved relief panels on the stairs and mezzanine. A Robert Morton theater organ played through grilles shaped like serpents.

Maurice Braha and two partners bought the building in 1965. On July 2, 1971, the auditorium was split into three screens as the Aztec Triplex. In 1989 the San Antonio Conservation Society bought the building, ran the movie theaters briefly, then closed the box office and wrote the nomination that put the Aztec on the National Register in 1992. It called the building arguably the only surviving Mayan Revival theater in Texas.

The theater was restored and reopened as Aztec on the River in 2007, then went through several closings and reopenings. Sam Panchevre bought it in 2014, and since 2013 it has run mainly as a live music venue, with Live Nation booking shows into a room that now holds 1,645. The organ is on display in a VIP lounge. For the building's centennial in 2026, four upper floors of former offices are opening as the 77-room Aztec Hotel, with a rooftop restaurant, and San Antonio native Robert Rodriguez has shown several movies in the theater.