Despite its name, this building was never home to a Spanish provincial governor; it served as the comandancia, the residence and headquarters of the local presidio captain who commanded San Antonio's garrison and administered military and supply affairs. Presidio captain Jose de Urrutia began the structure as a single adobe office in the early 1730s on his own property, and his son Toribio de Urrutia expanded it into a substantial multi-room stone-and-adobe residence by around 1749, with thick walls for insulation and decorative water channels (canales) typical of Spanish Colonial design. The house passed down through the Urrutia family, then to rancher Luis Antonio Menchaca, and eventually to Juan Ignacio Perez, whose brief 1816-17 stint as interim Texas governor is the sole basis for the later "Governor's Palace" name. By the nineteenth century the building had declined into commercial use, housing a saloon and pawnshop. Preservationist Adina De Zavala led efforts to save it, and the city of San Antonio purchased and restored the property, opening it as San Antonio's first city-owned museum on July 7, 1930. Today it operates as a furnished house museum near Main Plaza, administered by the city and staffed with period rooms, a courtyard, and interpretive exhibits, drawing tourists who come to see an intact example of Spanish Colonial domestic and administrative architecture rather than any working government function.