One of San Antonio’s most theatrical addresses is preparing for an encore. The 77-room Aztec Hotel at 201 E. Commerce St., part of Marriott International's boutique Tribute Portfolio, will celebrate its grand opening on October 17.

The building, which now houses Aztec Theatre, was built in 1926 by Robert B. Kelly and Robert O. Koenig of the Kellwood Company. The upstairs housed office space, but downstairs imagined a world far beyond Rolodexes, opening as a grand movie palace before being sectioned into a triplex in the ‘70s and reopening as the concert venue it is today.

The rest of the record is a little fuzzy. According to San Antonio legend (and the Aztec Theatre itself), the flamboyant interior was designed by Meyer & Holler, the Los Angeles firm behind Sid Grauman's Egyptian and Chinese Theatres in Hollywood. It’s not clear just how much involvement the architects had with the project, but we’ll allow theater folk a little mystery.

Whoever had a hand in creating it, the Aztec Theatre gave Dallas-based Shreem Capital a ton of inspiration to work with when planning its companion hotel. The interior was Mayan Revival, an ahistorical style that throws pre-Columbian Mesoamerican decorative arts into a salad of polychrome plaster, deep reliefs, and a little kitsch. Think of it as the Mexican equivalent of tiki.

A spirited mix of patterns awaits guests in one of the rooms.Photo courtesy of The Aztec Hotel

The hotel’s rooms and suites draw on the theater’s architectural oddity, if not its camp. The initial renderings showed chunky reliefs paired with geometric Art Deco fixtures, tambour accents, and lots of pattern. The rooms are outfitted with contemporary finishings like oversized headboards and spa-like marbled bathrooms.

“This building has been part of San Antonio’s story for a hundred years, and it deserves a next chapter that honors that history instead of erasing it,” said Sam Panchevre of Aztec Family Group in a release. “Turning these upper floors into a hotel means people get to actually live inside that story now, not just walk past it on the River Walk.”

The hotel will open with a new rooftop Latin Fusion restaurant, Zenita. The restaurant is billed as “an artful exploration of Mexican-Asian fusion cuisine” and is helmed by Jaime Hernandez, the former proprietor of the La Fonda de Jaime food truck.

The menu includes cross-cultural dishes like patatas bravas tossed in a Szechuan pepper sauce and served with yuzu avocado crema, a New York strip crusted in Bustelo café, and a kimchi Caesar salad. Cocktails have a similar point of view, combining yuzu syrup with nopal in a margarita. More cocktails can be found downstairs at Kellwood Lounge.

Bookings for the hotel can now be made through Marriott. Reservations for Zenita can be booked through OpenTable.