For over 100 years, the bluff balustrade has stood along the western edge of downtown Corpus Christi.
It’s one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks, although most of us hardly take notice of it and few of us appreciate its significance.
In 1986, the structure was designated a Texas Historic Landmark, and in 1988 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The story of its construction is fascinating.
The year was 1913, and Corpus Christi had just elected a 29-year-old “boy” named Roy Miller as its Mayor. The dynamic young mayor wasted no time implementing his plans to transform Corpus Christi from a typical Gulf Coast village into a major coastal city. Miller immediately upgraded the city’s water supply and was the first to begin paving city streets (the days of horse and buggy were quickly fading). He is best known for his role in obtaining a Congressional designation of Corpus Christi as a deep water port.
One of his first priorities as mayor was to do something about the city’s number one eyesore...the Bluff. The Bluff (not Flour Bluff) is the 40-foot rise in elevation that separates downtown from uptown. Since the city’s incorporation in 1852, the Bluff had always been a major headache for residents moving between the two. There were few access points, and the steep slopes were almost impossible to navigate during wet weather. The Bluff was usually covered with tall weeds and unsightly trash....not exactly the image that the city wanted to portray.
Miller hired prominent New York City Civil Engineer, Alexander Potter, to create and execute a beatification plan for the Bluff. Potter’s plan was to create a parallel street below Upper Broadway and terrace the Bluff to reduce the steepness of the slope.
Massive concrete retaining walls were erected to stabilize the Bluff and prevent erosion. Atop the walls would be an elegant balustrade the full length of the project, and grand stairways would connect Upper and Lower Broadway for pedestrians. Diagonal street ramps provided safe passage for vehicles traveling from uptown to downtown and back.
The “Bluff Improvement Project”, as it was called, would be constructed in stages.
Construction of the first stage began in 1914 between Lawrence and Peoples Streets after voters approved a $15,000 bond to pay for the project. At the foot of the Bluff where Schatzell and Peoples streets converge, the United Daughters of the Confederacy contracted famed sculptor, Pompeo Coppini, to create a beautiful fountain and sculpture called “Queen of the Sea”. Coppini donated his labor on the work to the city, and much of the funding came from the Corpus Christi Rotary Club (Coppini was himself a Rotarian, and he even incorporated the Rotary Wheel into the base of the sculpture). The Queen of the Sea sculpture and fountain was the city’s first public piece of art.
In 1915, voters approved an additional $150,000 bond, and stage two construction began between Peoples and Mann streets. This section included a magnificent arched entrance to a divided staircase at the western end of Starr Street, across from the new Federal Courthouse.
The final stage of the Bluff Improvement Project extended from Lawrence Street southward to Cooper’s Alley. This section was funded by property owners. In 1931, John G. Kennedy donated the land and funding for construction of the World War I Memorial along this section of the Bluff.
In 1929, a major addition to the Bluff Improvement Project came with the opening of the Bluff Tunnel. The entrance was behind City Hall and allowed easy access to uptown for pedestrians. The tunnel was open to the public until 1978 but has been closed since then.
Alexander Potter, the engineer, described his Bluff project in a 1915 article of “The American City”, which garnered national attention for Corpus Christi. But, like anything constructed in Corpus Christi, the harsh salt-air environment takes its toll on those structures. Within 20 years of its construction, the Bluff Balustrade was in need of a facelift. In 1939-1940, the Street Department spent almost a year making repairs and repainting the balustrade. The section in front of the Driscoll Hotel had to be demolished during the hotel’s construction and rebuilt afterward. Another overhaul took place in 1959....this time done by the Parks and Recreation Department. Repairs were done by employees who had little expertise so those repairs were rudimentary at best. The entire balustrade did get a new coat of paint however.
That same year, a major section of the balustrade at the far north end of Broadway had to be permanently demolished to make way for approaches to the new Harbor Bridge. By 1969, the balustrade and much of the entire Bluff had become an embarrassment for the city. Concrete sections were falling apart and the landscaping on the Bluff itself was poorly maintained or non-existent. Virtually all of the cast iron lamp posts were missing or badly damaged. Numerous editorials called for action, but again, only rudimentary repairs were made. It would be another 20 years before things got so bad that a major overhaul was needed to save the structure.
In 1990, work began on the first major restoration of the Bluff Balustrade since its construction in 1914. Some sections of the balustrade and staircases were repaired, while others were completely replaced. The original molds for the concrete work had been found so that replaced sections could be precisely duplicated. The restoration included re-installing vintage-looking lamp posts that had been missing for years, and extensive landscaping of the Bluff itself. The Coppini sculpture and fountain also underwent a major restoration during the 1990 project, funded once again by the Corpus Christi Rotarians. And, yet another $50,000 restoration of the sculpture and fountain took place in 2019.....this time funded by bond money. The bluff balustrade, Corpus Christi’s first major beautification project, looks as impressive today as it did in 1918.
Robert Parks is a special contributor to KRIS 6 News. Parks was a history teacher at Carroll High School for 19 years and is now retired. His knowledge of Corpus Christi history makes him a unique expert in the subject.