Before being supplanted by I-10 in the early 1960s, Alameda Avenue (U.S. 80) was the principal highway leading into El Paso from the east. Beginning in the early 1920s the avenue acquired building types especially oriented to cars and tourists. Around 1940, the Woman’s Department of the Chamber of Commerce made a special effort to persuade Alameda property owners to build or reface their premises in a Spanish Colonial mode. What is amazing is how much of it survives.
The two-story RD Insurance Group Building (1940, Mabel C. Welch) at 3030 Alameda was refaced as part of the demonstration project, which promoted the feasibility and economy of architectural “facelifts.” Opposite at number 3031 is the deserted Mission Theater (1941, O. H. Thorman), which, architecturally, lives up to its name.
Alameda’s pièce de résistance of scenographic extroversion is the Stage Coach Inn Motel (former Red Mill Court) at 4108–4110 Alameda. The Herald-Post reported in 1937 that owner Jack McDonald had erected Spanish style screen walls to transform his existing tourist court into a romantic fantasy. By 1941 McDonald commissioned O. H. Thorman to enhance the court with this complex of extravagantly picturesque buildings, described in the Herald-Post as being in the “Taos style.”