A 122-year-old mansion built for the founders of Pearl Brewery has reopened in San Antonio's Monte Vista neighborhood, not as a hotel or event venue, but as a schoolhouse. Great Hearts Monte Vista, a public charter school, has moved into the restored Koehler House at 310 W. Ashby, transforming the historic estate's first floor into a library and art classrooms while its lower level becomes music rooms.
The transition marks the latest chapter for a property that spent decades as an art education hub before its adaptive reuse as a K-12 campus. According to the San Antonio Report, Great Hearts Texas CEO Randy Smith invited students to see the Koehler House as the network settled into the mansion, its carriage house, and its sweeping grounds. The carriage house is now used for art lessons, and the school's upper floor houses the Great Hearts Texas executive team, part of an arrangement the network says frees up classroom space in its main school building.
From Brewery Fortune to Classroom
Built in an eclectic Romanesque style by San Antonio architect Carl von Seutter and constructed by Jaco Wagner, with grounds by landscape architect G.A. Schattenberg, the house was completed in 1901 for a cost of more than $100,000 — a fortune at the time, per the San Antonio Report's reporting. It served as the home of Pearl Brewing founders Otto and Emma Koehler; Emma Koehler lived there for more than four decades, running the brewery through Prohibition after she was widowed in 1914, and she died in the house in 1943.
The 12,665-square-foot, three-level mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark by the Texas Historical Commission in 1975, according to Wikipedia. That landmark status requires developers to follow strict preservation guidelines during structural work — a constraint that shaped years of planning for whoever eventually took over the property.
A College's Surplus Becomes a Developer's Bet
The Koehler estate had been donated to the Alamo Colleges District in 1971 by Otto Koehler's nephew to support fine arts education, and for roughly 50 years it operated as the Koehler Cultural Center, where San Antonio College's Visual Arts and Technology Department ran ceramics and jewelry design studios, as detailed by the San Antonio Heron. After the district declared the 1.9-acre estate surplus, its Board of Trustees authorized its sale to Weston Urban in February 2022 for $2,037,800, beating out a competing bidder in the process, the Heron reported.
Weston Urban's plans for the mansion shifted more than once after the acquisition. The developer initially proposed turning the former Koehler home into a special event space, and San Antonio's City Council approved rezoning along with an alcohol variance for the property in June 2023 to support a planned boutique hotel and restaurant, according to MySA's reporting at the time. The San Antonio Report notes the developer ultimately paid $2.3 million for the property, and city records reviewed by MySA reflect the alcohol permit sought despite the site's proximity to nearby houses of worship and schools. The developer eventually pivoted away from hospitality and toward education instead.
An $8 Million Restoration
That pivot required extensive and careful repair. Weston Urban oversaw the Koehler House restoration with architecture firm Ford, Powell & Carson, ultimately investing roughly $8 million to bring the aging mansion up to code for school use while preserving its historic character, per the San Antonio Report and earlier Express-News coverage of the project. Katherine Fontenot said the restoration preserved the house's historic character while making it compliant for a school, and she separately praised Rialto Studio for its landscape design and Troy Jessee Construction for its work on the project.
The mansion's more unusual features survived the transformation intact. Great Hearts Monte Vista's new home includes a ballroom and a one-lane bowling alley, along with a carriage house and grounds that now host a greenhouse used by the school's gardening club. A capital campaign funded additional project extras, including sound-proofing for the new music rooms, while an anonymous donor funded a new fenced sport court on the grounds — one painted with the words truth, beauty and goodness across its surface.
A Playground With a Somber Story
Not every addition to the property is purely celebratory. The school's new playground was named in memory of 8-year-old Kellyanne Lytal, who died in floodwaters at Camp Mystic in 2025. Jacquie Fagan said the playground honors Lytal, a detail that gives the campus's reopening a quieter, more solemn undercurrent alongside the excitement of new classrooms.
Growing Pains and a Statewide Network
Great Hearts Monte Vista opened in 2014 and has outgrown a patchwork of borrowed spaces in the years since. The school currently maintains kindergarten-through-fifth-grade classrooms at Temple Beth-El, while middle and high school classrooms operate out of Trinity Baptist Church at 319 E. Mulberry Ave. Enrollment stands at 572 students in kindergarten through fifth grade as the upcoming school year begins August 11, and Great Hearts leases the Koehler House in part specifically to free up classroom space in its main school building.
Great Hearts Texas now operates 13 public charter school campuses serving nearly 13,000 students across San Antonio, Fort Worth, Arlington, and Irving, according to Niche. The network's expansion has not been without regulatory scrutiny: the Texas Education Agency appointed a conservator to oversee Great Hearts Texas in May 2024 following a state investigation into employee background check procedures and management fee payments to its national parent organization, as reported by the San Antonio Express-News. Hoodline's own prior reporting on the earlier TEA probe detailed the background-check and fee issues that prompted the state's intervention.
Neighborhood and Company Milestones
For Weston Urban, the Koehler House project marked its first major development located outside downtown San Antonio, a departure from a portfolio built on landmarks like the Frost Tower, Rand Building, Savoy Building, and 300 Main, per the Express-News. The mansion sits within the Monte Vista Historic District, which received its own Texas Historical Commission marker in 1985 recognizing its collection of late-19th and early-20th-century residential architecture, according to The Historical Marker Database.
At the reopening, a high school senior and a fourth grader cut the ceremonial ribbon together. Randy Smith said the changed plans — educational reuse rather than a boutique hotel — were vastly superior for both the neighborhood and the school, while Monet Lessner said using the house and lawn for the school felt too good to be true.
