To accommodate the high volume of visitors to HemisFair'68, the twenty-one-story, five-hundred-room hotel was constructed by general contractor H. B. Zachry in nine months. From the fifth floor to the twentieth, prefabricated reinforced-concrete modular guest rooms were hoisted in place around the slip-formed elevator core. The construction method was one of the most ingenious engineering and technological feats in the city.
Gerald Moorhead et al., "Hilton Palacio del Rio Hotel", [San Antonio, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-01-SA37.
Buildings of Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 154-154.
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