The History and Mystery of the Menger Hotel (Williams, 2000)
Cover image pending capture.
Bibliographic detail
- Title: The History and Mystery of the Menger Hotel
- Author: Docia Schultz Williams
- Year: 2000
- Publisher: Republic of Texas Press (presumed — common publisher for Williams’s ghost-and-history titles; verify on title page)
- ISBN: TBD — verify in-hand
- Pagination: TBD — verify in-hand
- Format: Paperback (presumed; verify in-hand)
Physical description
Docia Schultz Williams’s hospitality-history-plus-ghost-lore volume on the Menger Hotel. Standard popular-press production for the Republic of Texas Press / Williams ghost-and-history series. Cover style and binding TBD — verify in-hand. Condition: unknown per the accession register.
Provenance
Physically in-hand prior to formal library accessioning; registered to the library 2026-05-24 under the TODO-26 buildout. Original purchase date and source not separately recorded. Accessioned as HH-BOOK-2026-0015. The book had been carried as a resources/ entry prior to this consolidation.
Why it matters
The Menger Hotel is a long-established downtown San Antonio hotel sitting in the same commercial district as H&H — and the H&H research corpus has documented direct intersections with the Menger / Menger family:
- 1909-06-06 SA Express News — Hoffman-Menger marriage notice (
assets/images/gallery/1909-06-06-san-antonio-express-news-hoffman-menger-marriage-page-30.jpg) — direct family-tie between the Hoffmann surname (H&H founder line) and the Menger family. - 1923-08-26 SA Light — Gus R. Menger president article (
assets/images/gallery/1923-08-26-san-antonio-light-gus-r-menger-president-page-01.jpg) and L. B. Menger article (...l-b-menger-page-01.jpg) — same date as Huntley Monitor catalog references in the H&H research; documents Menger-family civic prominence in the H&H operating era.
Williams’s History and Mystery is the popular-narrative entry point to the Menger family history and the hotel’s place in downtown SA across the same decades when H&H was operating. Treat sensational ghost passages as prompts to verify against primary sources, but the book provides the atmospheric and personnel framing for the Menger-family research thread.
Specifically valuable for:
- Hoffmann-Menger family connection — Williams may document the Menger genealogy in enough detail to identify which Menger married into the Hoffmann family in 1909.
- Gus R. Menger / L. B. Menger period — the 1923 SA Light articles establish these Mengers as civic figures; Williams may name them and provide biographical context.
- Menger Hotel as downtown SA institution — period photographs, anecdotes, named guests; useful as comparandum for the H&H downtown commercial context.
Notable contents
- Menger Hotel architectural history.
- Menger family biography (likely — verify).
- Famous-guest anecdotes (Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders particularly).
- Reported hauntings and atmosphere — treat as secondary to verified material.
Open questions
- Does Williams name the Menger family member who married into the Hoffmann line (per the 1909 Express News notice)?
- Does Williams document Gus R. Menger or L. B. Menger as 1923-era civic figures?
- Any direct H&H mention? (Likely none, but worth checking.)
Related
- 1909-06-06 SA Express News Hoffman-Menger marriage clip (in gallery).
- 1923-08-26 SA Light Gus R. Menger and L. B. Menger clips (in gallery).
- people/william-r-hoffmann.md — the Hoffmann family side of the 1909 marriage.
- Saving San Antonio (Fisher, 1996) — same downtown preservation context.
- Historic Photos of San Antonio (Faulkner, 2007) — companion SA visual reference.
- resources/the-history-and-mystery-of-the-menger-hotel.md — citation-pointer page.
- library/index.md — full library holdings.