Museums

Posada La Roca

by Margaret Fleming

One of the landmarks of Puerto Peñasco is the Old Stone House, also known as the Hotel Peñasco. It's on the left as you enter the Old Port, a large building constructed of gray stone blocks within a fenced enclosure. Legend has it that Al Capone used to stay there when he was fleeing from justice in the U.S.

We met Jorge Seldner, who, with his brother, currently owns this historic building. It has been vacant for years, but now it has been renovated, and Jorge is renting rooms in it. He calls it Posada La Roca. Posada means hostel in Spanish.

The Stone House was built with stone from the hill where the lighthouse is situated. It was cut by artisans into blocks almost uniform in size and shape. Their skill is evident when you compare the main part of the construction with three rooms that were added later, in which the blocks are all uneven in size and shape.

The building has been in Jorge's family since the late 30's. It was at one time owned by a man named Stone, which is where it got its name. But perhaps because of its construction material, the name stuck. It was a haven for gangsters in 1928, but after Prohibition ended in 1933, it deteriorated rapidly. Legend has it that there was a big fire, started by Stone himself as part of an insurance fraud.

Jorge's grandmother bought the property in the late 30's and made it into a hotel, the first in Puerto Peñasco. She died in 1981, leaving the property, which had been vacant for years, to Jorge and his brother Roberto. At the time Jorge was working in Hermosillo and Roberto in Nogales. After her death, they spent whatever time they could in Puerto Peñasco fixing up her house for sale; it is now a museum owned by Dr. Vasquez. Then in 1993 they turned their attention to the Stone House. Jorge commuted from Hermosillo at first, but in 1998 came to Puerto Peñasco to live permanently. He and his wife Eloisa have an apartment in the hotel.

The main entrance to the hotel is to the east, facing the sea and the Malecon. There's an enclosed porch that's been added later, but the hotel's main entrance leads into a spacious lobby with a fireplace and several comfortable chairs. The lobby takes up the entire width of the building. From there a hallway leads down the middle with rooms on either side--what's called a shotgun design because you can fire a shotgun from the front door straight through to the back one. There are 11 rooms available, three with private baths. Common bathrooms are available for the other 8. The rooms with baths rent for $25 a night; the others for $20.

Jorge and Eloisa have put in new plumbing and new electricity, and furnished the rooms attractively. When replacing the drainage, they found old clay pipes in perfect condition, handmade, 4" in diameter with 1" thick walls. Too late they found out that they wouldn't have needed to replace them. We asked if they had saved any of them as antiques, but they said no. Other antique fixtures that they replaced were porcelain insulators for electricity. The original floors were concrete, and some of them are still visible, but the lobby and some of the bedrooms have tile floors put in by Jorge's grandmother. The walls are thick and the ceilings high, both necessities before air conditioning was widespread. The central hallway has skylights overhead and clerestory windows above the roofs on both sides. This makes it very light.

After completing the renovation, Jorge wants to restore the front entrance by tearing down the spurious porch and making a small yard with a wrought iron fence, the way it used to be. He also wants to install air conditioning and establish a little museum in the building with exhibits that illustrate its history. But the building is a museum already. Visit it to get a sense of Puerto Peñasco's architectural past.