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If you’re familiar with the Texas coastline, the first thing that strikes you as being odd about Corpus Christi is that it’s not entirely flat. A 40-foot bluff parallels the bayfront of the city. This occurs nowhere else along the Texas Gulf Coast. The bluff divides central Corpus into two – a literal ‘downtown’ and ‘uptown.’
This natural division gave the city material to work with during the City Beautiful Movement that swept the country in the early 1900s. Engineer Alexander Potter was hired in 1914 to design six blocks of the bluff between Mann and Mesquite Streets. He filled the six blocks with landscaped retaining walls, stairways, roadways and railings. Broadway Street was divided into two, with Upper Broadway forming a straight edge along the top of the bluff and Lower Broadway, at the base, following the contours of the bluff. Upper Broadway overlooks the harbor, with a pedestrian walkway and railing capping the retaining walls. The sightlines Potter created between the bay and the bluff give panoramic views from Upper Broadway out to the sea. Six stairways connect Upper Broadway with Lower Broadway. The ‘Grand Staircase’ is at Peoples Street. At the foot of the stairs is an odd memorial to Confederate veterans, a sculpture and fountain by Pompeo Coppini of Father Neptune and Mother Earth crowning Corpus Christi as “Queen of the Sea.”
Potter finished his work in 1918. A pedestrian tunnel was built through the bluff in 1929, connecting Corpus Christi City Hall, at the bottom of the bluff, with the basement shops of the White Plaza Hotel on top of the bluff.
The improvement was popular enough that it was extended another half-mile along the bluff in 1931, this portion of the improvement paid for by private donations. Part of the extension created Spohn Park with its World War I Memorial, the Gold Star Mothers’ Court. This memorial featured an illuminated gold star and 36 bronze markers, each inscribed with the name of a serviceman killed in World War I.
Although the improvement remains, Corpus hasn’t taken very good care of it. Ugly metal handrails have been installed on some stairways. The pedestrian tunnel was shuttered when City Hall moved uptown and the White Plaza Hotel closed. The gold star in the Gold Star Mothers’ Court is not lit anymore. Some of the sight lines to the bay have been obscured by buildings and vegetation. Much of the improvement is crumbling, and what has been fixed hasn’t been fixed very well. But it could be worst. The bluff is still worth a drive or, better yet, a bike ride. The Coppini fountain still bubbles. And the views of the bay are still stunning.
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