National Register Listing

Menger Soap Works

400 block of N. Laredo St., San Antonio, TX

The Menger Hotel is a historic hotel in downtown San Antonio, Texas. It was built in 1859 by German immigrant Johann Nicholas Simon Menger. It is the oldest continuously operating hotel west of the Mississippi River.

In 1850 a German immigrant, Johann Nicholas Simon Menger, founded a factory on the banks of the San Pedro Creek in San Antonio, Texas, to manufacture soap for the fast-growing Southwest area. Soap had first been imported from Saltillo, Mexico, in 1835. As the Texas population began to grow, the demand increased for such basic needs as soap. Thus, Simon Menger decided to abandon his occupation as San Antonio's first classroom music teacher, and establish the more profitable industry of soap manufacturing.

Menger located his factory on the San Pedro Creek to take advantage of the water supply. He built a large lime-stone vernacular building with high ceilings and tall windows to allow proper ventilation from the steel vats. The soap making process involved obtaining suet from the various San Antonio butcher shops, mixing it with water from the nearby creek, then adding lye and acids. In the tall, open room this mixture was heated in large steel vats on a fire-place hearth, thought to be below ground level. The liquid soap was then poured into square wooden vats to cool. After sectioning the solid cakes by pushing them through strong wires, someone stamped the Menger label and wrapped the soap. It was then distributed by wagon and rail throughout Texas and the Southwest. Production at one time is said to have reached 40,000 pounds a week. Some of the brand names that were listed in early city directory advertisements were Alamo Queen, Katy Flyer, Dragon, Trilby and German.

Simon Menger's son, Erich, continued his father's factor^ until his death before World War I. The firm then closed and the building remained vacant for many years. In 1950 the structure was converted into apartments. Formerly hidden by dilapidated structures, the partial clearing of the area has just recently revealed the charm of the early building.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1973.