Brazos Apartments
El Paso, Texas

Description: Brazos Apartments
Address: 514 North Mesa Street at Missouri Avenue, El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Type: domestic: apartment building
Original Client: Charles Davis
Date: 1905
Condition: demolished, 1978

Architect or Firm: Henry C. Trost
Associated Architect or Firm: Trost & Trost
Contractors:
Dimensions and Orientation: three stories with basement, 78 feet x 120 feet; 185 room apartments; faced Southwest
Budget/Cost:

Foundation: stone
Wall Materials: brick with stone quoins
Roofing Materials:
Other Materials Used: ornamental ironwork on balconies

Location of Drawings:
Location of Documentary Photographs: El Paso Public Library, Ponsford 532, perspective view

Bibliography: (1) Trost and Trost, Architects. El Paso: Trost & Trost, 1907, page 36 (illustrated [Ponsford 532])
(2) El Paso Herald, Tuesday, January 31, 1905, page 4 (description, perspective view and plan of one floor)
(3)Lloyd C. and June-Marie F. Engelbrecht, Henry C. Trost: Architect of the Southwest (El Paso: El Paso Public Library Association, 1981), pages 35 and 37 (discussed); page 36 (illustrated [Ponsford 532]); page 125 (bibliographical notes)

Remarks: The colorful history of the Brazos is well known and well documented (including the fact that El Paso’s legendary medium, Madam Mack, lived there for many years). (See the El Paso Public Library files.) The Brazos Apartments has played a role in El Paso architectural history far beyond the significance of the apartment building itself. The demolition of the Brazos marked a nadir for local historic preservationists, and their rallying point. At least two wrought iron balcony balustrades have been preserved (privately owned).

Prepared for the El Paso Public Library by Lloyd C. and June F. Engelbrecht under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990