La Madrilena
Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A native of Spain, Adrian Ortiz (1860-1957) emigrated to Brownsville before he was 18 and lived with relatives who trained him as a merchant. He built this structure in 1892 to house his mercantile operation, La Madrilena (native of Madrid), an important community business for over 60 years. The vernacular store building features corbeled brickwork, parapets with pinnacles, and paneled doors with transoms.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Adrian Ortiz left Spain as a teenager and settled in Brownsville before he turned eighteen, taken in by relatives who trained him in the merchant's trade. In 1892 he built this store to house La Madrilena — "native of Madrid" — a mercantile business that anchored the community for more than sixty years. Its vernacular brickwork, corbeling, parapets with pinnacles, and transomed doors still speak to the ambitions of a nineteenth-century immigrant merchant.
Why it matters
La Madrilena is a tangible record of the immigrant entrepreneurs whose shops built the commercial backbone of Texas border towns.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Adrian Ortiz
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Miguel Fernandez Hide Yard
Brownsville, TX
Brothers Miguel Fernandez and José Fernandez-Toral immigrated from Asturias, Spain, and built an import-export business in Brownsville. After their partnership dissolved, Miguel opened one of the city's first hide yards here in 1890, during a drought that forced ranchers to slaughter herds; the yard rendered tallow, bleached bones and horns, and baled hides for distant markets while stocking ranch supplies. The distinctive Border Brick-style building, expanded around 1900, stayed in the family until 1984 and was listed on the National Register in 1990.
Juan H. Fernandez Store
Brownsville, TX
Juan H. Fernandez came to America in 1875 at age fourteen as a ward of his uncle, an Asturian merchant from Pendueles, Spain. Following the family trade, he opened his own store in 1883 in the classic 'border brick' style, using clay fired in local kilns called hornillas, and prospered serving the ranch and farm country around Brownsville. In 1921 he bought the 6,000-acre Noriega Plantation, known as Rancho Viejo.
Cueto Building (La Nueva Libertad)
Brownsville, TX
Built in 1893, this handsome brick building housed 'La Nueva Libertad,' the growing grocery and mercantile business of Don Andrés Cueto, a Spanish immigrant, complete with retail store, storerooms, a carriage house, and domed bakery ovens. Its corbelled brick cornice and parapet make it a fine surviving example of late nineteenth-century South Texas commercial architecture.
Manautou Building
Brownsville, TX
Enrique Manautou arrived from Mexico in 1902 and built a chain of dry goods stores across the Lower Rio Grande Valley as railroads and refugees from the Mexican Revolution swelled the region's trade. In 1928 he opened his namesake department store in Brownsville's Market Square, a two-story Chicago-style building of brick and cut stone with prism-glass clerestory and plate-glass display windows. Manautou went on to become the first Mexican-American president of the city's Chamber of Commerce.