THE GATEWAY PORTAL: INTRODUCTION(Map )
In San Antonio and Bexar County, history is all around you. This exhibit will guide you to some of those buildings and to institutions where you can learn more about our past.
CITY FORMATION, 1836-1880
SPANISH-MEXICAN PERIOD
The early Spanish settlements in Texas, including San Antonio, grew out of the imperial rivalry between France and Spain in the late 1600s. The Spanish, anxious to protect the northern frontier of their empire from French encroachment, established a series of missions and presidios (military outposts), in what is now Texas. They established Mission San Antonio de Valero and a presidio to protect it at the headwaters of the San Antonio River in 1718; in 1730 the villa (town) of San Fernando de Bexar was founded next to the presidio. During the next few years four more missions were established nearby, and by 1780 the town was the capital of the Spanish province of Texas and had a population of about 2,000, a mixture of Spanish-Mexicans, Native Americans from the missions, African Americans, and Canary Islanders. In 1813 San Antonio joined the Mexican revolution against Spain and declared for Mexican independence. The revolution failed and punishment was swift and brutal; a Spanish royalist army occupied the city and decimated the population. In 1821 Mexico, including San Antonio, finally achieved independence from Spain. San Antonio continued to be a governmental center, but an influx of Anglo-American colonists created a group of new towns in eastern Texas that soon surpassed it in population, and it remained a frontier outpost.
SAN PEDRO SPRINGS
San Pedro Springs is located in San Pedro Park, just northeast of the central business district. Its clear waters emerging from the Edwards Aquifer were the principal reason for the establishment of a Spanish settlement here, and Native Americans had used the springs as a campground and gathering place for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. In 1718 Mission San Antonio de Valero was established on the banks of San Pedro Creek, which flows from the springs; the mission was later relocated to its present site near the San Antonio River. In 1729 the Spanish government set aside the land around the springs for public use, and in 1851 the San Antonio City Council designated some of that land as San Pedro Park, the city's first public park. It became a popular spot for swimming, picnics, dancing, and public gatherings. During the 19th century the city leased the park to concessionaires who built pavilions and other improvements. Eventually there was a museum, a swimming pool, a library, a theatre, and tennis courts there. In 1993 the city adopted a master plan for the park which would emphasize the springs, the swimming pool, and additional green space. The restored park was opened to the public in 2000. In recent years the flow of water from the springs has been drastically reduced by pumping from the Edwards Aquifer, and the pool is now filled with well water.
THE SAN ANTONIO RIVER
The San Antonio River rises from springs just north of the central business district and flows southeast for 180 miles before entering the Guadalupe River near the town of Tivoli. The river is the reason the Spanish located the missions that were the forerunners of the city here. It provided drinking and irrigation water to local residents for nearly two centuries. The Spanish built a network of acequias (irrigation ditches) along it to water their fields, and the city's drinking water was pumped from it until the late 1880s. In the 1800s its waters provided power for San Antonio's mills and small industries. It has also been the source of destructive floods and, since the 1920s, the focus of a continuing flood control project now administered by the San Antonio River Authority. Its channel has been straightened and two tunnels, one three miles long, have been built to control its overflow. Its scenic beauty can best be appreciated in Brackenridge Park, where some of its headwater springs are located, and along the downtown Riverwalk.
MAP/DIRECTIONSTHE ALAMO 1724
Mission San Antonio de Valero, later called the Alamo, was the first of the group of Franciscan missions that was established near the headwaters of the San Antonio River in the early 1700s. Its buildings occupied all of what is now Alamo Plaza [picture of Alamo Plaza]; today only the chapel and part of the adjoining priests' residence remain. Although the Alamo is best known for the battle that took place there in 1836, its buildings have served many uses: Spanish mission, Spanish and Mexican military outpost, Texan fortress, U.S. Army Quartermaster depot, grocery store, and, since 1905, a shrine cared for by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.
HOURS OF OPERATION: Monday through Saturday 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Saturday hours are by appointment only. Phone number: Website:
MAP/DIRECTIONSMISSION SAN JUAN
SPANISH GOVERNORS' PALACE 1749
The Spanish Governor's Palace is located on the west side of Military Plaza. Although its name is traditional it was not actually the official residence of the Spanish governor of Texas but the home of the captain of the presidio and the headquarters of the Spanish military detachment that was stationed here. Before the 1840s both Military Plaza and Main Plaza were surrounded by one-story, flat roofed stone houses like this; they were the residences of the principal families of the town. In the 1840s new Anglo-American owners began to replace the flat roofs with pitched shingle roofs, by the end of the 1870s most of the residences around the plazas had been replaced with two- and three-story commercial buildings. The Spanish Governors' Palace is the last remaining 18th-century residence on either of the plazas. It was purchased by the city in 1929 and was restored by architect Harvey P. Smith.HOURS OF OPERATION: Monday - Saturday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.Sundays, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.Admission: Adults - $2.00.Military/Seniors - $1.50.Children ages 7 - 13, $1.00.Children under seven - Free.
MAP/DIRECTIONSSAN FERNANDO CATHEDRAL 1755
Originally the parish church of San Fernando de Bexar,the San Fernando Cathedral, located between the two principal plazas of the town, has been the center of Catholic religious life in San Antonio for two centuries. Unlike the missions, which were served by Franciscan missionaries, the parish church was under the care of the ordinary clergy, and all of the Catholic community's rites of passage - baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and funerals - took place here. In the 1850s and 1860s other parishes were created to serve Irish, German, and Polish Catholics, but San Fernando has remained the spiritual heart of San Antonio's Hispanic community. The church was extensively rebuilt between 1868 and 1873 by architect Francois Giraud, who razed the bell tower and part of the nave and created a Gothic Revival building with twin bell towers and butresses. In 1874 San Antonio was made the headquarters of a new Catholic diocese, and the church was designated as a cathedral. It has continued to function both as a parish church and as the seat of a bishop. There is a museum adjacent to the church. Call 210) 227-1297 for more information.
MAP/DIRECTIONSA CITY TAKES SHAPE 1836-1880
Texas became an independent Republic in 1836, and San Antonio slowly began to develop into a bustling commercial and military center. The United States Army first established a presence in San Antonio during the Mexican - American War of 1846 - 1848 and, with the exception of a hiatus during the Civil War, there has been a large military establishment here ever since then.
During the Gold Rush San Antonio became the jumping-off place for California-bound emigrants using the overland route, and a number of mercantile establishments were opened to supply their needs. The city was also the hub for freighters hauling goods from the Texas coast to Mexico and western Texas. After the Civil War, it became a trade center for the cattle ranches that were developing in South Texas and, in the 1870s, for the wool industry on the Edwards Plateau. Merchants and entrepreneurs, many of whom were immigrants from Germany, began to build homes on the fringes of town, and the plazas became commercial centers.
JOSE ANTONIO NAVARRO HOUSE 1840
The Jose Navarro House then and now
Some members of San Fernando de Bexars elite families continued to occupy places of leadership in the city long after the 1836 Revolution secured Texas's independence from Mexico. Jose Antonio Navarro was one of several prominent Hispanic citizens who supported the Revolution. Along with his uncle, Jose Francisco Ruiz, and Lorenzo de Zavala, he was one of the three Mexican signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. He was a member of the convention that wrote the first state constitution in 1845 and served two terms in the state senate. As a member of a wealthy merchant family, he was a leading citizen of San Antonio and had extensive property holdings in and around the city. When the Civil War loomed, he supported secession and his four sons served in the Confederate Army. He died in 1871. His house is a typical upper-class Hispanic residence of the period.HOURS OF OPERATION:
Tuesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.FEES:Adults: $2. 12 and under: free. Group tours: $1 per person.12 and under: free. Website: Phone number: MAP/DIRECTIONSURSULINE ACADEMY 1851
The Texas Revolution severed Texas's ties with the Catholic Church in Mexico, and in 1847 Pope Pius IX established the new Diocese of Galveston, which encompassed all of Texas, under the direction of Bishop Jean Marie Odin, a Frenchman, who had served the Church in Texas since 1840. Odin wished to establish a system of Catholic schools in Texas, a task which he entrusted to the Ursuline Order of nuns. The first group of nuns arrived in Galveston from New Orleans in 1847 and established an Ursuline Academy [LINK?]there. A group of Ursulines from Galveston opened the San Antonio Academy in 1851. Subsequent Ursuline Academies were established in Laredo and Dallas.
The San Antonio Academy drew female students from all over western Texas and northern Mexico. The convent and the original school buildings were designed by architect Francois P. Giraud; additional structures have been added over the years. During the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1930 the convent offered refuge to Mexican bishops, priests, and nuns fleeing persecution. In 1965 the Ursuline sisters moved the Academy to a new site in the suburbs, and the old Academy buildings were purchased by the San Antonio Conservation Society. Today they house the Southwest School of Art and Craft.HOURS OF OPERATION: Monday to Saturday, 10:00am to 5:00pm. Sunday from 11:00am to 4:00pm. Phone:210.224.1848.
MAP/DIRECTIONSO. HENRY HOUSE 1855
This small three-room stone house, built in 1855 by John Kush and now located at the corner of Laredo and Dolorosa Streets downtown, was originally at 903 South Presa Street. It is typical of the modest homes built by San Antononians in the 1850s as residential areas developed away from the city's plazas. In 1894 and 1895 it was rented by William Sidney Porter, who used it as a part-time residence and office for the San Antonio edition of The Rolling Stone, the humorous newspaper that he published under his pen name, O. Henry. Porter, who lived in Austin, enjoyed San Antonio's romantic atmosphere and colorful saloons and set several of his short stories here.
MENGER HOTEL 1859
The Menger Hotel in 1865 and today.
The building of the Menger Hotel on the east side of Alamo Plaza in 1859 marked the beginning of that plaza's development as a commercial center. In the 1840s Alamo Plaza was still partially surrounded by the crumbling walls of Mission San Antonio de Valero and was a somewhat desolate place. In 1849 the U.S. Army moved into the ruins of the Alamo and repaired them for use as a quartermaster depot, and ten years later William Menger, a German immigrant, built the original section of the hotel just south of the Alamo. It quickly became San Antonio's most fashionable hotel, and by the 1880s it was the best-known hotel in the Southwest. It has been expanded several times, most notably in 1909 by San Antonio architect Alfred Giles, who created a an interior atrium surrounded by balconies. The hotel's distinguished guests have included Robert E. Lee, Philip Sheridan, U.S. Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt. A brochure about the public spaces is available in the lobby of the hotel.
CHAPEL OF THE MIRACLES 1860
Although the Anglo-American and German population of San Antonio increased rapidly in the 1850's, the Spanish-speaking community still played an important role in the city. The Chapel of the Miracles was built as a private chapel on the homestead of a member of that community, Juan Ximenes, a native of San Antonio who had been a soldier in the Texas Army during the 1836 Revolution. The original building was a simple gabled building; the tower and the Gothic windows were added in 1946. The chapel houses a Spanish Colonial crucifix which may have originally been at Mission San Antonio de Valero and could have been entrusted to a member of the Ximenes family during the political troubles of 1813. The building is still in the custody of the Ximenes family and the crucifix is an object of devotion to many who come to pray there for relief from pain or trouble.
MAP/DIRECTIONSUNITED STATES ARSENAL 1860
During the last half of the 19th Century, San Antonio was the supply center for all of the U.S. Army forts in West Texas. Quartermaster supplies and ordnance were shipped from here by wagon train and later by railroad. The original Quartermaster Depot, where supplies were stored before shipment, was at the Alamo, but in 1858 the government purchased twenty acres on the river south of town and begin constructing stone office and warehouse buildings. The arsenal was surrendered to the Confederates when the Civil War started, but the U.S. Army re-occupied it in 1865. In 1868 five million pounds of food, forage, and ammunition were hauled from these buildings to the West Texas forts. The army used the Arsenal until 1949, when it was given over to Federal government offices. In 1976 most of the buildings were sold and are now private business offices. The Arsenal is not open to the public, but the buildings can be seen from Arsenal Street.
MAP/DIRECTIONSHUEBNER-ONION HOUSE 1862
In the 1860s San Antonio was a hub for wagon freight and stagecoach lines carrying freight, passengers, and mail to Mexico and western Texas. The Huebner-Onion House, built in 1862 by Austrian immigrant Joseph Huebner, was located on the Bandera Road, an important road leading northwest from San Antonio. Huebner supplied the stage lines using this road with horses and mules and provided blacksmithing services for the freight wagons that passed his house. He was a major dealer in livestock, with a livery stable in San Antonio and over a thousand head of horses on several ranches in 1870. He died in 1882 but his descendants occupied the house until the 1930s, when it was sold to Judge John F. Onion and his wife, Harriet. The house is presently being restored by the Leon Valley Historical Society. It is not open to the public, but it can be seen from the highway at 6613 Bandera Road.
MAP/DIRECTIONSHELOTES AND THE SCENIC LOOP c. 1865
Helotes, in northwest Bexar County, began to develop as a community around the spot where the Bandera Road crosses Helotes Creek, in the mid-1850s. Dr. George Marnock, a former British naval surgeon, built his home on the creek in the late 1850s; the two-story stone house is visible from the Scenic Loop. Marnock's son, Gabriel Marnock, who lived in the house until his death in 1920, was a noted herpetologist who collected many specimens along the creek. A species of frog, Syrophis marnocki, is named for him, and the bulk of his collections are at the Baylor University Museum in Waco. At about the same time that Marnock built his house members of two prominent San Antonio families, the Menchacas and the Zepedas, acquired land in the area, and it may have been their corn fields that gave the settlement its name, which means "ears of corn" in Spanish. In 1880 Marnock sold some of his land to Arnold Gugger, a Swiss immigrant, who built a two-story stone house surrounded by wooden galleries that is still standing in what is now called Old Helotes. During the 1920s several affluent San Antonians built country homes along the Scenic Loop, which runs north from Helotes through the hills that define the edge of the Balcones Fault. In recent years Helotes was well-known as the location of Floores Country Store, a music venue.
MAP/DIRECTIONSSIMON FEST STORE 1870
The part of town along South Flores Street south of Main and Military Plazas was occupied by wagon yards in the 1860s and 70s and was known as Laredito. Wagon trains from Laredito carried freight from San Antonio to Mexico and across West Texas to points as far away as El Paso, a three-month one-way trip. The two-story limestone Simon Fest store was built in this district about 1870 to supply the teamsters with groceries and other necessities; a beer garden and dance hall behind the store provided them with recreation. Simon Fest, who was one of the original members of the Alsatian colony at Castroville, lived above the store with his family. His widow and son, Simon Fest, Jr., continued to operate the store after his death in 1881. There was a wagon yard across the street from it as late as 1904, probably used by farmers bringing produce into town as by then all freight leaving San Antonio was moved by the railroad.
EDWARD STEVES HOUSE 1876
As San Antonio continued to grow in the 1870s, a number of wealthy merchants, many of them Germans, built large houses on King William Street. Edward Steves was a typical member of San Antonio's German merchant community. He came to Texas from Germany in 1849, at the age of 20, and settled on a farm near Comfort. After the Civil War he moved to San Antonio and opened a lumberyard, importing cypress from Louisiana and pine from Florida and hauling it by wagon from the Texas coast. His business expanded rapidly after the railroad arrived in San Antonio in 1877 and he began to invest in real estate, retiring from active participation in the lumber business in 1882 and devoting most of his time to civic associations and German fraternal societies such as the San Antonio Turnverein, the Schuetzenverein, and the Casino Club. His neighbors on King William Street included the Guenthers, the Grooses, the Joskes, the Hummels, the Harnisches, and other prominent San Antonio German families. The Steves House is open to the public: 10:00 AM to 4:15 daily (last tour begins at 3:30). $5.00 adults; children under 12 free. Please call regarding discounts offered to seniors, military, groups, schools, and San Antonio Conservation Society members. Free Parking on site.Address: 509 King William. Phone: (210) 225-5924. A brochure with a walking tour of the King William Historic District can be obtained here.
FORT SAM HOUSTON QUADRANGLE 1878
In the early 1870s the United States Army decided to consolidate its Texas quartermaster depots in San Antonio, and at about the same time San Antonio was designated as the headquarters of the Military Department of Texas. The Alamo and the Arsenal were not large enough to accommodate these combined functions, and the army began searching for a new site. Through a combination of donation and purchase it acquired 92 acres on a hill northeast of town, and in 1876 construction was started on a huge building known as the Quadrangle, a logistical center that covered 7 acres and had a six-thousand gallon water tower in the center to fight any fires that might break out in its one million square feet of storage space. Originally designated the Post at San Antonio, the name was changed to Fort Sam Houston in 1890. In 1910, Lieutenant Benjamin Foulois conducted the army's first experiments in military aviation at the fort with an airplane purchased from the Wright brothers. Expansion of the post began almost as soon as the Quadrangle was finished, and today Fort Sam Houston covers // acres and houses a wide variety of military functions, including Brooke Army Medical Center, the United States Army Dental Laboratory, and Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. The Fort Sam Houston Museum at 1210 Stanley Road, buldg 123 is open from 10=4 Wednesday through Sunday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and the fourth of July. Visitors without DOD vehicle registration must enter through the Walters Street gate and pick-up a visitors pass.MAILING ADDRESS: Fort Sam Houston Museum/MCCS-GPTMS-M/2250 Stanley Road Suite 36/Fort Sam Houston, Texas 78234-6111. Phone: 210.221.1886
MAP/DIRECTIONSST. PHILLIPS EPISCOPAL CHURCH
ELLIS ALLEY ENCLAVE 1890s
Ellis Alley is the traditional heart of San Antonio's East Side African American community. A number of small frame houses built here and on adjacent streets in the 1890s and early 1900s provided housing for middle-class African Americans. Many were owned by their occupants; in fact six lots on Crockett Street, just north of Ellis Alley, were owned by former slaves as early as 1869. Many important African American institutions were nearby. St. Paul's Methodist Church was built a block south of Ellis Alley in the 1870s, and the Second Baptist Church a block north of it in 1885. In 1909 the Beacon Light Lodge building was erected on the corner of Ellis Alley and Chestnut. G. J. Sutton, Bexar County's first elected African American officeholder, worked in his family's funeral parlor on the first floor of the building in the 1930s. By that time the blocks of East Commerce Street just south of Ellis Alley had become San Antonio's African American commercial district. Charles Bellinger, an African American political leader, owned a pool hall and cigar store there, and his son Valmo Bellinger published his newspaper, the San Antonio Register, just two blocks north in a building on Crockett Street. A few of the Ellis Alley houses and the Beacon Light Lodge building have been preserved through a joint project of the San Antonio Conservation Society and VIA Metropolitan Transit.
MAP/DIRECTIONSLONE STAR BREWERY 1895
Large-scale breweries were among the industries made possible by the arrival of the railroad in San Antonio in 1877. San Antonio had at least a dozen small breweries in the years just after the Civil War, but it was not until Adolphus Busch of St. Louis founded the Lone Star Brewery here in 1883 that modern brewing technology was introduced into the city. That same year a group of San Antonio businessmen organized the San Antonio Brewing Association, which later became the Pearl Brewery, San Antonio's other large brewery. The Lone Star Brewery's original frame structure was replaced by the present nine brick buildings between 1895 and 1904. An 800-foot deep artesian well provided water and the brewery had its own bottling plant. By 1900 about 65,000 barrels of beer were shipped annually by rail across the Southwest and into Mexico. The brewery was closed when prohibition took effect in 1918 and the buildings were used for other purposes.
In 1972 the brewery site was acquired by the San Antonio Museum of Art. The buildings were restored and adapted for museum use by the Cambridge Seven Associates, a Massachusetts architectural firm. The San Antonio Museum of Art is open Tuesday 10 am - 9 pm;Wednesday through Saturday 10 am - 5 pm; Sunday noon - 6 pm; closed on Monday.General Museum admission is free to the public every Tuesday from 4 pm to 9 pm. (a surcharge may apply for special exhibitions. Otherwise admission costs are as follows Members and children 3 and under:FREE; Adults $8; Seniors (65+)$7;Students and active military (ID required)$5;Children:$3.
MAP/DIRECTIONSBRACKENRIDGE PARK 1899
Brackenridge Park occupies a 370-acre tract of land on both sides of the San Antonio River deeded to the city by banker George W. Brackenridge in 1899. In the early 1900s the new park supplanted San Pedro Springs as San Antonio's principal place for outdoor recreation. Brackenridge Park contains a series of structures that recapitulate the history of public recreation in 20th-century San Antonio. In the early 1900s a swimming beach, named Lambert Beach after one of the city park commissioners, was developed on a bend of the river, and in 1917 a cast concrete bathhouse clad with rustic stone was built next to it. That same year the Japanese Sunken Gardens - during World War II they became the Chinese Sunken Gardens - were built in an abandoned quarry within the park boundaries. In 1927 the whimsical Joske Pavilion was built to accommodate large gatherings, and in 1929 the San Antonio Zoological Society was formed to create a zoo within the park. In the 1930s Dionicio Rodriguez, San Antonio's master faux bois craftsman created a rustic concrete pedestrian bridge and several other features for the park. Other improvements over time included playing fields, an open-air theatre, and the Brackenridge Eagle, a miniature train that loops through through the park. The park's early history is entwined with that of San Antonio's water supply, which originally came from the river. In the 1880's George W. Brackenridge, who owned the San Antonio Water Works Company, built a raceway and water-powered pumping system in what was later the park to pump water from the river into a reservoir, from which it flowed by gravity into the city's water pipes. As the city grew in the 1890s and demanded more water, Brackenridge provided it by drilling artesian wells, the first of which was within the park.
San Antonio Zoo website/directions.
RAILROAD DEPOTS 1902,1907
The arrival of the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railway** in San Antonio from the east in 1877 launched San Antonio into a new era of economic growth. The railroad built its first depot on the northeast side of town near Maverick Park, nearly two miles from Main and Military Plazas. Four years later, in 1881, the International & Great Northern Railroad reached San Antonio from Austin and built its depot a mile west of the plazas. Streetcars, at first mule-drawn but after 1890 electric, soon connected the two stations, and the commercial center of town shifted from the two plazas to the two main east-west streets, Commerce and Houston. By 1900 three more railroads had arrived, and shortly afterwards both the G.H. & S.A. and the I. & G.N. built imposing new passenger stations. The G.H. & S.A., which had become part of the Southern Pacific System, choose a Spanish Mission Revival architectural style that reflected their advertising as the Sunset Route to California and built their station, Sunset Station, on a new site on East Commerce Street. The I. & G.N. (Later the Missouri Pacific) followed suit with an even more elaborate Spanish Mission Revival building on the site of their old station on West Commerce Street. Both stations embodied San Antonio's new status in the 1900 census as the largest city in Texas. Sunset Station has been restored and is the focal point of an area of shops, offices, and restaurants. The Missouri Pacific depot has also been restored and serves as an office building.
MAP/DIRECTIONSHILMAR GUENTHER HOUSE AND PIONEER FLOUR MILL 1915
Carl Hilmar Guenther, an immigrant from Germany, built a flour mill on a bend of the San Antonio River south of town in 1859 and built a six-room rock house beside it for his family. His business prospered, but when the railroad arrived in 1877 he realized that he could not compete with the larger and more modern mills in the Midwest that now had access to his market. He doubled the size of his mill and replaced the old open waterwheel with new turbine wheels from Milwaukee. He continued to improve the milling machinery and in the 1880s the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad laid a spur track to the mill. By the time of Carl Hilmar Guenther's death in 1902 his Pioneer flour, in sacks with his portrait on them, was sold all over South Texas and northern Mexico, and the Pioneer Flour Mills was one of San Antonio's leading industries. The street leading to the mill, King William Street, had become one of San Antonio's most desirable residential neighborhoods, and several of Guenther's children along with other wealthy German businessmen had built their homes there. In 1915 Guenther's youngest son, Erhard, who was president of the milling company, decided to enlarge and modernize his parents' old rock house beside the mill. The result was an Arts-and-Crafts home with a tiled garden room and a roof terrace. The house is open as a museum under the auspices of the Pioneer Flour Mill, and there is a restaurant in the garden room.
MAP/DIRECTIONSHANGAR #9 BROOKS AIR FORCE BASE 1917
During World War I San Antonio became a center for military flight training, due to the army's historic presence in the city and the region's mild climate. Kelly Field, established in 1916, was the U.S. Army's principal training base for pilots, and most of the combat pilots of World War I received their wings in San Antonio. The airplanes, two-seater JN-4 biplanes nicknamed Jennys, were kept in 30 huge, barnlike wooden hangars with sliding doors and dirt floors, built from a standard pattern developed by the Army Air Corps. Hangar #9 at Brooks Air Force Base, which was originally part of Kelly Field, is the only World War I hangar left in the United States. Today it houses the Edward H. White II Memorial Museum of Aerospace Medicine, but the exhibits include a JN-4 biplane. Open hours
MAP/DIRECTIONSPROSPERITY AND DEPRESSION
1920-1940 The years between 1920 and 1940 were stressful ones for San Antonio. The national economic boom of the 1920s generated a corresponding building boom in downtown San Antonio and several affluent suburbs were developed north of town, but at the same time the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1930 brought an unprecedented number of refugees from Mexico, many of whom were desperately poor, to the city. They crowded into substandard housing on the city's West Side, creating some of the worst slums in the United States. At the same time the city's leaders failed to attract industry to the city, and by 1930 both Dallas and Houston had surpassed San Antonio in population and economic development. The Great Depression brought unemployment and misery to many San Antonians, but it also generated Federally-funded public works projects that improved the city's public spaces.
MIRA FLORES GARDENS 1920
The Mexican Revolution brought a flood of refugees to San Antonio. Most were ordinary people, seeking refuge from violence or from conscription into the opposing armies, but a few, like Dr. Aureliano Urrutia, were men of wealth and position whose political fortunes had shifted. Urrutia was President Porfirio Diaz's personal physician and served as Minister of the Interior to President Victoriano Huerta. When Huerta's government fell in 1914 Urrutia moved to San Antonio and opened a successful medical practice. He built a large mansion on Broadway, called Quinta Urrutia and, a few blocks north of it, a small summer house surrounded by gardens, which he called Mira Flores. The gardens, which backed up to the San Antonio River, were the site of lavish entertainments in the 1920s and 30s. Several of Urrutia's children became doctors and pharmacists. In 1940 Urrutia wrote, "I will never be able to repay the Mexican Revolution for the many benefits it has showered upon me: it brought me here to educate my family, transplanting it from a place of anguish and anxiety to a more fertile soil."
Both Quinta Urrutia and the summer house have been demolished, but a portion of the gardens remain and are visible from Hildebrand Street. They include a reproduction of the Nike of Samothrace which once surmounted Quinta Urrutia, a pair of stone lions from its entrance, work by San Antonio rustic concrete artist Dionicio Rodriguez, and a pair of tiled gateposts. A tiled archway from Mira Flores is in the San Antonio Museum of Art.
MAP/DIRECTIONSOUR LADY OF GUADALUPE CHURCH 1921
The Hispanic population of San Antonio increased enormously between 1900 and 1940, from 25% of the total in 1900 to 46% in 1940. Many of these people were desperately poor refugees from the Mexican Revolution, and most settled on the city's West Side, where housing and health conditions were among the worst in the United States. Our Lady of Guadalupe Church was built in 1921 to serve the West Side and was dedicated, as the cornerstone says, by the Mexicans of San Antonio, Texas to their celestial patroness, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Father Carmelo Tranchese, who was pastor of the church from 1932 to 1953, fought to improve health and housing conditions on the West Side. He established a neighborhood clinic that offered classes in disease prevention and free vaccinations, and he became San Antonios major advocate for Federally-funded public housing. He was responsible for the replacement of some of the West Sides worst slums with the Alazan-Apache Courts, completed in 1942. In recent years Our Lady of Guadalupe Church has remained a focal point of community activisim. Across Guadalupe Street from the church is Plaza Guadalupe, created in 1984 and featuring a statute of General Ignacio Zaragoza, Mexican hero of the Battle of Puebla, and nearby is the Guadalupe Theatre, built in 1941 and restored in 1984 as part of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. Adjacent buildings are adorned with murals created by local Hispanic artists. Most of the Alzan-Apache Courts residential units have been replaced with more modern units, but the original entrance and office building is still visible at.....
MAP/DIRECTIONSWITTE MUSEUM 1926
The Witte Museum, San Antonio's museum of history, anthropology, and natural history, opened in 1926 in a Spanish Colonial Revival building located in Brackenridge Park. It was built with public funds and a bequest from local businessman Alfred G. Witte in honor of his parents, and until 1984 it was known as the Witte Memorial Museum. A series of additions has altered the building's original appearance. In the 1940s three historic houses, the Francisco Ruiz House, the John Twohig House, and the Celso Navarro House, were moved to the Witte grounds. The museum has a long tradition of public education programs and publications. The collections include important archaeological and Native American material from the Southwest, a large amount of Philippine material donated by former army officers, an extensive costume collection, examples of Texas furniture, and a collection of art by Texas artists.
MAP/DIRECTIONSOLMOS DAM 1926
In terms of long-reaching effects, Olmos Dam is probably the most important public works project ever undertaken by the city of San Antonio. It was built in response to the devastating flood of September, 1921, which sent a wall of water crashing into downtown San Antonio, inundated the West Side and killed 50 people. The dam created a reservoir that can hold 15,500 acre-feet of water, preventing it from entering the San Antonio River and protecting the downtown business district from flood waters. The building of Olmos Dam encouraged investment in downtown building and made possible the construction of the Riverwalk along the downtown bend of the river. It also stimulated the development of two elite suburbs, Olmos Park and Alamo Heights, on either side of the reservoir. It did not, however, solve the problem of flooding on the city's Hispanic West Side, which was caused by the overflowing waters of Alazan and San Pedro Creeks, a problem whose solution had to wait fifty more years.
MAP/DIRECTIONSTEMPLE BETH EL 1926
Like many Southwestern cities, San Antonio in the late 1800s had an active community of German-American Jewish merchants, many of whom were involved in the German Jewish Reform movement. In 1874 44 of these men in San Antonio established the citys first Jewish congregation, Beth-El. The first Temple Beth-El was dedicated in 1875 on the corner of Travis and Jefferson Streets, facing Travis Park. By 1902 the congregation had outgrown that building, and a new temple was erected on that site and dedicated in 1903. Twenty years later the population of San Antonio had almost tripled and the new temple was no longer large enough and in 1924 the congregation purchased a lot north of the business district near San Pedro Park. The new building, designed by Seutter and Simons, was dedicated in a three-day ceremony in April, 1927. The new sanctuary seated 1200 people and the building contained classrooms, an auditorium, a library, a dining hall, and a kitchen. Temple Beth El has been expanded several times since it was built. It remains the principal center of Jewish life in San Antonio and many of the city's leaders are members.
MAP/DIRECTIONSSMITH-YOUNG TOWER 1928
The completion of the 31-story Smith-Young Tower (now known as the Tower Life Building) in 1928 was the symbolic capstone of San Antonios meteoric rise to urban leadership in Texas, even though by the time it was built Dallas and Houston had surpassed San Antonio in population and economic development. The Tower, designed by Atlee B. and Robert M. Ayres, was built by three East Texas real estate developers, J.A. and F.A. Smith and J.W. Young as the centerpiece of a 10-acre downtown mixed-use development modeled on Rockefeller Center, a project made possible by flood control improvements on the San Antonio River. For many years it was San Antonios only skyscraper, visible at the end of most downtown streets. It has housed the Sears, Roebuck Company, the Humble Oil Company, and, during World War II, the headquarters of the Third Army. In the 1950s it was owned by the San Antonio Transit Company and was known as the Transit Tower. The building is San Antonio's own embodiment of the exuberant and optimistic expectations that preceded the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Late Gothic Revival lobby is open:
MAP/DIRECTIONSMARION KOOGLER McNAY ART MUSEUM 1929
The building housing the McNay Art Institute was built as the private home of Jessie Marion Koogler McNay, a Kansas oil heiress and art collector who moved to San Antonio in 1926 when she married a local doctor. The Spanish Colonial Revival mansion, designed by Atlee B. and Robert M. Ayres and named Sunset Hill, housed her collection of American watercolors, French Impressionist paintings, works by Taos and Santa Fe artists, and Pueblo Indian and Spanish New Mexican crafts. In 1942 McNay provided space for the San Antonio Art Institute, which had been housed at the Witte Museum, in a converted aviary on the grounds of her home. The Institute still flourishes on a 4 acre campus next to the Museum. When McNay died in 1950 she left her home, the 23-acre estate surrounding it, and her collection to the city, along with two-thirds of her estate as an endowment to establish a museum of modern art. The Museum's first director, John Leeper, broadened the collections scope with the assistance of many local donors and added several wings to the original building. HOURS OF OPERATION:Sun: noon - 5 pm.Mon:Closed.Tues,Wed,Fri: 10 am - 4pm.Thurs:10 am - 9 pm. Sat:10 am - 5 pm. ADMISSION: Members and children 12 and under: FREE. Adults: $8. Students with I.D., Seniors (65+) and Active Military: $5.
MAP/DIRECTIONSGEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER LIBRARY AND AUDITORIUM 1929
The Art Deco building now known as the Carver Community Cultural Center was built in 1929 as The Colored Branch of the San Antonio Public Library and Auditorium, a name that is still engraved in stone above its doors as a reminder of the public racial segregation that once prevailed in San Antonio. The building of the Carver Library was the culmination of a twenty-five year long struggle by San Antonio's African Americans to establish a public library facility that would be open to them. The building was designed by Seutter and Simons. Its auditorium quickly became the cultural heart of the African American East Side. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Sarah Vaughan all performed there; Oscar De Priest and Langston Hughes spoke there; and it was the site of high school and college graduations and performances by local groups such as the Negro Little Theatre and the Mattie Lewis Terpsichorean Club. The building was vacated by the Library in 1973 and was renovated for use as a cultural center. It reopened in 1975 as the Carver Community Cultural Center, a multiethnic and multicultural performing and visual arts center. Additional facilities, including the Little Carver, a flexible performance and meeting space, have been added since then. TThe Carver Academy, a private school for East Side children founded by San Antonio Spurs basketball player David Robinson and his wife, Valerie, is next door and shares the Carver's performance spaces. Open hours:
MAP/DIRECTIONSHERTZBERG LIBRARY BUILDING 1930
The Hertzberg Library building was built in 1930 as the main building of the San Antonio Public Library. Designed by Herbert S. Green, it is an excellent example of Modern classicist architecture. In 1942 the building was enlarged to house the Hertzberg Circus Collection, which was donated to the City of San Antonio by local businessman Harry Hertzberg. At the time the Hertzberg Collection was one of largest collections of circus material in existence. When the main library moved to a new building in 1968, the entire old building was given over to the circus collection, which was later moved to the Witte Musem. MAP/DIRECTIONS