La Madrileña
a.k.a. Adrian Ortiz Grocery
1002 E. Madison, Brownsville, TXLa Madrileña, constructed in 1892, is associated with prominent Brownsville merchant Adrian Ortiz (1860-1957). In translation, La Madrileña means "native of Madrid" and was so named because Spain was the birthplace of Ortiz. The building eloquently represents the vernacular commercial architecture of the Lower Rio Grande Valley along the Texas-Mexico border, and today serves as one of the finest examples of 19th-Century commercial architecture in the city of Brownsville.
La Madrileña is located in Brownsville in the southernmost part of Texas in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. This Valley, generally defined as south of the Nueces River in Texas and north of Monterrey in Mexico, is recognized as a distinctive cultural region derived from the overlay of Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American occupation. One distinction is its vernacular architecture which has attracted the attention of a number of scholars.
Most of their studies have focused on domestic architecture; however, some generalizations concerning commercial architecture may be drawn from various works. Commercial buildings along the Rio Grande probably evolved from the late 18thCentury simple adobe or jacal structures containing both domestic quarters and commercial activities in one room to segregated commercial and living spaces in at least two rooms. This trend appears to have been set by the 1850s when the commercial buildings in early settlement areas reflected the use of course-stone load-bearing walls, hewn wooden lintels, double doors, and shallow parapets concealing flat roofs drained by canals. (Some probably had gabled, thatched roofs.) The finest of these sported decorative quoins, cornices, and occasionally wooden door molds. The locational preference appears to have been for prime, corner lots on the central plaza while the preferred forms were either an L-plan enclosing a private area or a rectangular plan and symmetrically placed double doors opening to the street. The overriding cultural influences on these buildings were the Spanish and Mexican building traditions.
By the late 19th century, commercial architecture evolved to using double-wythe brick load-bearing walls, machine-sawn wooden door and window surround, and a tall parapet concealing a flat or hipped roof. While the preference for corner locations and especially the L-plan continued, the change to using brick allowed designers to build two stories high and define cornices and pilasters with corbelled brick. With an additional floor, wrought iron balconies often were added and domestic and commercial spaces were able to be segregated by floors.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.