In 1890 the Denver-based Chamberlin American Investment Company began development of Alamo Heights on a 3.4-square-mile tract 5 miles northeast of the center of the city on land settled in the mid-1800s by George Washington Brackenridge and Charles Anderson. Working through its local agents, the Alamo Heights Land and Improvements Company, the developers remodeled a house that rancher Anderson had built in 1860 and turned it into the Argyle Hotel. Large lots, averaging 85 × 150 feet, were platted around the hotel, and the developers furnished a water supply and an electric streetcar for transportation to and from the city. Roads followed the hilly terrain and avoided many large oaks. After the financial failure of the original company in the first decade of the twentieth century, the land beyond the first development was platted in smaller lots of irregular size and shape for more modest houses. Alamo Heights, incorporated as a city in 1922, is locally known for having an excellent school district, which accounts for its continued desirability as a close-in neighborhood.
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