Atlee Ayres

Atlee Bernard Ayres (July 12, 1873 – November 6, 1969) was an American architect. He lived in central Texas.

Atlee B. Ayres was born in Hillsboro, Ohio, on July 12, 1873, the son of Nathan Tandy and Mary Parsons Ayres. The family moved to Texas, lived in Houston, and then moved to San Antonio in 1888, where Ayres' father managed the Alamo Flats luxury apartment hotel for many years. In 1890, Ayres went to New York to study at the Metropolitan School of Architecture, a subsidiary of Columbia University. There, he won first prize in the school's annual design competition. His teachers included William Ware, a student of Richard Morris Hunt. Ayres took drawing lessons at the Art Students League at night and studied painting under the noted teacher and artist Frank Vincent DuMond.

Upon his graduation in 1894, he returned to San Antonio and worked for various architects. He subsequently moved to Mexico, where he practiced until 1900. That year he moved back to San Antonio and began a partnership with Charles A. Coughlin that lasted until Coughlin's death in 1905. One of their projects was the three-story home of Ethel Draught, at 1215 N. St. Mary's St, now part of the campus of Providence Catholic School.

Early in his solo career in San Antonio, Ayres designed a hotel (1907) later known as the Heimann Building, and now occupied by Avance, a non-profit serving children and families in need. He also made the plans for the still-surviving Halff house (1908), and for a villa for Col. George Washington Brackenridge that was later torn down. He also designed the David J. and May Bock Woodward House, which currently functions as a club house for the Woman's Club of San Antonio and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Bexar County, Texas on February 16, 1996.

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