Memories of San Antonio

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 1

I once read that San Antonio of the 1940s and ‘50s was best described as a “sleepy town.” Since I left Texas only a single time in that period, and didn’t travel all that much within the state either, I really had no way to compare my hometown with others to see if this description was truly accurate. To me the city seemed quite awake and alive, and it is with great fondness that I look back to that time and place. I left my family and my hometown in 1961 to go off to school and then into the Navy, and I’ve only been a visitor there ever since then.

In the past couple of years, I’ve written some stories describing places I’ve been, thanks mainly to my time in the Navy which gave me all kinds of travel opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise. But I haven’t written one word about the place I started out – this piece on San Antonio is an attempt to correct that shortcoming.

Any discussion of San Antonio is almost obliged to begin with the Alamo. That’s why it’s called the Alamo City. Those of us who live there take the Alamo for granted and almost tend to forget about it, even though it has a way of working itself into the names of businesses, and even into some of the city’s architecture. And most of the world associates San Antonio with the Alamo, so we’ll start there.

In February and March, 1836, there were 189 Texan defenders of the Alamo, a Spanish mission being used as a fort at the time, under the command of William Travis. The Texans were facing a 3,000-man Mexican army led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. We won’t get bogged down in the historical background leading up to the confrontation, or its eventual outcome. But I will point out some sources you can check out if you want the full story. For now, I’ll just remind you that Travis was supported by such familiar names as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.

Here is the front of the building today – it will probably look familiar even to someone who’s never been in Texas, because it gets a lot of publicity:

http://www.lindsayfincher.com/gallery/d/9687-1/san_antonio_alamo_2.jpg

As far as I’m concerned, everything looks better as a post card, especially if it’s a linen one:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txpstcrd/Towns/SanAntonio/SanAntonioAlamo50.jpg

On March 6,1836 the last defenders fell to the Mexican army who stormed the mission, and the Battle of the Alamo was over. ‘Remember the Alamo’ became the rallying cry for those who later succeeded in gaining the independence of Texas – just six weeks later at the Battle of San Jacinto a few hundred miles from San Antonio.

The official website of the Alamo has background for those of you who want more than just a picture and a one-paragraph overview:

http://www.thealamo.org/main.html

The carving of a monument called the Cenotaph was begun at the centennial celebration of the Battle of the Alamo in 1936, to honor those who died in defending the mission, and it was completed in 1939. Here’s an overall view of the monument:

http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/00/12/bc/6e/alamo-cenotaph.jpg

And a closer view of the west side of the Cenotaph:

http://www.texasescapes.com/SanAntonioTx/Images/CoppiniAlamoCenotaphSanAntonioTexas2001JT.jpg

And both the west and south sides:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3018/2482289118_e170941f0d.jpg?v=0

And for a more thorough discussion of the Cenotaph:

http://www.texasescapes.com/SanAntonioTx/The-Alamo-Cenotaph.htm

The Alamo and the Cenotaph are the two major elements in what’s called Alamo Plaza, but there are two other buildings right here that have a lot of meaning for me. You probably won’t care that much. However, since I’m the one writing this and you’re the one reading it, I’m going to go ahead and include these two buildings – if you don’t care, you can just skip over this part.

The Main Post Office and Courthouse was where I took a test that was very important for me, as it affected the entire course of my life after high school. It was built in 1937 under a Great Depression work program, and is in the Beaux Arts style of architecture that I like so much.

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicv/vfiles16272.jpg

Many out-of-work artists were employed in this project, as you’ll see when you examine some of the details. Here’s a detail of what’s above each of the three main entrances you saw in the picture of the whole façade:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/383455075_662febb290.jpg?v=0

And an even closer detail of what’s above each entrance, with emphasis on the nickel:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/2318169400/in/set-72157600328739199/

And in the lobby:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/2317364257/in/set-72157600328739199/

The Medical Arts Building was completed in 1926. With its thirteen stories, it was the tallest building I had ever been in when I used to go there to see the dentist as a six-year old child. I remember that the dentist’s office overlooked the Alamo. Here are some exterior views of the V-shaped building:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1002/822962106_9c071cbd21.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3226/2661725242_7b4fd99b6b.jpg?v=0

But what I remember most vividly about this place was that the dentist did all of his drilling on me without using any novacain whatsoever. I have since learned that novacain was available many years before I was even born, so I don’t know why he didn’t use it. I always wondered if I was just imagining this, but when I posted this story on a San Antonio forum, a lady came forward and said she had never been able to convince anybody that the same thing happened to her in the same Medical Arts Building. So we corroborated each other’s stories.

The building is now the Emily Morgan Hotel, but I would never stay there, because I would still feel the pain from the dentist’s drilling. And besides, my brother lets me stay at his house at no charge whenever I come to town for a visit.

I also remember quite vividly that each door to a doctor’s office was a dark wooden frame with translucent glass making up most of the door. The doctor’s name was always painted neatly on the glass. I think the upper half of most of the corridor walls was also that same kind of frosted glass, showing the name of the doctor.

Something I learned while preparing this story, is that some of the most interesting architectural features of the building are the terra cotta gargoyles depicting figures with various ailments, including toothaches and other medical themes. I never realized that, and I’m sure lots of other San Antonio natives don’t know it either.

For example, here are two people who aren’t feeling all that well today:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/medicalartsgargoyle1.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/medicalartsgargoyle2.jpg

Here’s another gargoyle, in which you can see dual mortars and pestles in a shield above the face of a nurse with her head wrapped, which was the practice in the Middle Ages:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1190/822956478_d9113e5649.jpg?v=0

An interior detail showing the caduceus (a staff wrapped with two serpents, which must be what old time doctors used to chase off diseases and afflictions):

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1359/822079269_7595a9b5f0.jpg?v=0

And some ornamentation at the front corner (remember the V-shape of the building):

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1019/822959886_06e0743bef.jpg?v=0

Up by the flag all the way at the top:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1413/822084671_4f3ed353ac.jpg?v=0

By the way, the namesake of the current hotel which occupies the building, Emily Morgan, is a legendary figure thought to have had a role in the Texans’ victory at San Jacinto shortly after the fall of the Alamo. That victory gave the Texans their independence from Mexico. It is also believed that she was the inspiration for the song The Yellow Rose of Texas.

And here’s an old post card that shows Alamo Plaza, including the Cenotaph, the Post Office/ Courthouse, and the Medical Arts Building. The Alamo is hidden by the trees, but is just below the Texas flag you see flying on the right side of the picture. My sister, who is a great painter of watercolors, made a painting of this post card and it’s hanging in my living room.

http://www.cardcow.com/images/alamo-plaza-post-office-san-antonio-us-state-town-views-texas-san-antonio-36202.jpg

Next up: the Riverwalk and Houston Street, which was our main drag back then in the 1940s and ‘50s, and still is today. But today the street lacks the vibrancy it had back in my youth.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 2

The San Antonio River has been there all along, even when I was still living there so long ago, and many years before that. And there was always a walkway along the river. But it got a lot better when it became the Riverwalk in connection with the HemisFair Exhibition in 1968, long after I had left town. The Riverwalk is now a major tourist attraction and it gets exposure every time the San Antonio Spurs play basketball on national television. Lots of new hotels, restaurants, and stores have joined the few that were there before.

http://www.kent360.com/files/EconomicDevelopment/waterfront/SanAntonioRiverWalk.jpg

We used to go to Casa Rio, the restaurant with the bright umbrellas in the picture above, even before the current Riverwalk was a gleam in anyone’s eye. It was one of a few great places on the river during my youth. Casa Rio was certainly nice back then, but is even better now. Well, my favorite Mexican restaurant in San Antonio isn’t anywhere near the river, and we won’t see it until a later episode. But Casa Rio is right up there on my list – a great combination of good food and wonderful scenery. And compared to what you pay for a Mexican meal in other parts of the country, it’s extremely reasonable. Here’s another view a little closer to the water:

http://actionsa.c21unitedgroup.com/files/1088459/Riverwalk SA.jpg

And here’s what the Riverwalk looks like around Hanukkah time:

http://olegus.info/photos/texas/14-Riverwalk.jpg

Here’s a pretty good website with additional information and views of the Riverwalk:

http://www.texasexplorer.com/RiverWalk.htm

The main drag of San Antonio has always been Houston Street. Here’s what it looked like in my day, from a post card – nothing out of the ordinary – nothing that anybody else’s hometown didn’t have. But when I was young, I didn’t know that it was just like any other city’s downtown. I always thought Houston Street was the most exciting place in the whole world, since my world at that time was San Antonio. This post card shot is taken from Alamo Plaza, which we discussed in the previous episode:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/houstonstreet4.jpg

And here’s Houston Street again, looking in the same direction as the last view, but from a position a few blocks down the street moving away from Alamo Plaza. You can see the Majestic Theater’s sign in this view:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/houstonstreet1.jpg

The Majestic was my favorite theater, and the magnificent interior was its major attraction. It was built in 1929, relatively early in the development of movie theaters – long before they devolved into the pathetically drab multi-screen crackerboxes that we have today. The theater was restored to its former glory in 1989 after sitting unused for 15 years, and here’s what we used to marvel at when we came to see movies:

http://www.battersbyornamental.com/majesticproscenium1.jpg

The theater is now used only for live performances, including concerts and musicals. As long as they continue using it for something, and continue to maintain it after its magnificent restoration, I’m extremely happy. When it was just sitting idle in a deteriorated condition, I wasn’t.

We always used to sit in the balcony, so I never realized until finding that picture above just how ornate the underside of the balcony was. I remember the arch over the screen, and all of the beautiful intricate work on the side walls very well. And here’s a detail of one of the incredible decorative items on the side walls:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/majesticsidewall.jpg

The ceiling also shows the evening sky, with stars and the moon shining brightly enough to be seen, but not too brightly to interfere with the show.

When three-dimensional movies were in vogue – and I don’t know why they aren’t any more – the Majestic was the best place to go. They handed out the special glasses with plastic frames, rather than those cheap cardboard frames you got at all the other theaters. I remember seeing The Charge at Feather River at the Majestic, and I can still see the Indians’ arrows heading towards us up in the balcony.

Since the statute of limitations now gives me protection, I can go ahead and freely admit that once or twice at the Majestic, we actually kept our 3-D glasses with the plastic frames. We pretended to toss them back into the bin when leaving the theater, as we were supposed to, but we hung on to them and stuffed them into our shirts to take them home. They made great sunglasses.

As an aside, think about the fact that we were supposed to return our 3-D glasses for the next batch of movie-goers to use. As time marches onward, we sure change. Can you imagine someone today wearing glasses that had been previously worn by some stranger who probably had every affliction in the books? We didn't know that our lives were at risk for doing this - the way everyone now knows.

And besides the fantastic movies we were able to see – often double features - the place was air conditioned! The only buildings with air conditioning back then were stores and theaters. It was wonderful to get a respite from the San Antonio heat, but leaving an air-conditioned building to step back out into that same heat made it feel even hotter than it did before we went in.

The Aztec Theater is almost as nice and is just a few blocks from the Majestic. The Aztec was built a few years before the Majestic, having been completed in 1926, and it too sat idle for many years, but was recently restored. Most of the renovation was completed in 2006 and re-opened, but there are some additional modifications ongoing at the moment, and the theater will open again in the winter of 2008.

The most memorable parts of the Aztec, for me at least, were the foyer and mezzanine, as best shown in these two old post cards. The decor was intended to look like what the Aztec Indians of Mexico would have built if they were in charge of building the theater.

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/Aztecfoyer.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/Aztecmezzanine.jpg

The Aztec’s ceiling also featured the moon and the stars, just like at the Majestic.

Here’s where we would buy our tickets:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/360014241/in/set-72157594483875835/

And the lobby:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/360014104/

I hope that after reading this and seeing the pictures, you can understand why I felt that the movie was almost secondary to all the glorious artwork in the theater. Every time I went to the Majestic and Aztec Theaters, I spent lots of time just gaping at the decorations. Both theaters had lots of other features just as nice as what you saw in the photos above, but very few of you would want to get bogged down in such detail. For the few of you who might, here’s a site that has all kinds of fascinating info on the restorations – written by the company who did the plaster portion of the overall work. It might be more information than most of you will want, but that’s your call. Note that this company, Battersby Ornamental, has masterfully handled the plaster portions of both aforementioned theaters’ restorations, as well as similar work in many other treasured places throughout San Antonio, some of which we’ll talk about later.

http://www.battersbyornamental.com/links.htm

The Texas Theater was the third jewel in the crown of our downtown theaters – at least in my opinion. Here’s what the Texas looked like on a post card:

http://www.sanantoniotheatres.com/texas_theatre_pic.jpg

The theater opened in 1926 and the following year hosted the premier of Wings, the winner of the first Academy Award for Best Picture, which was shot in the San Antonio area. That was, of course, before my time. Wings still remains the only silent movie to win the Best Picture award, and it’s unlikely that it will ever lose that distinction.

The march of progress has unfortunately bulldozed right over the Texas, or at least over its interior. It was re-configured into a bank that lasted for an entire two years. But happily, much of the building’s façade remains today, looking as good or better than what it was in the theater’s heyday.

And a close-up of the theater’s sign, which is now gone, along with the nicely-decorated side wall overlooking the river, which is still there:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/162/408463770_3873d325cb.jpg?v=0

Next up: San Antonio’s three railroad stations - all of which are architectural masterpieces.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 3

The great novelist Thomas Wolfe once said "... there are very few buildings vast enough to capture the sound of time, and most of them are railroad stations." He probably never visited San Antonio, and even if he had, he would not have put any of our three train stations into that category anyway. None of ours could really be called vast, nor could any of them match New York City’s Pennsylvania Station or Grand Central Station. Even I would concede that point.

While our three stations can’t compete with the mammoth stations of New York or Philadelphia or Washington, DC, ours are all classics in their own more humble ways. I am lucky enough to have used all three San Antonio stations, and I love them all - even the one that’s gone now. Two of them have façades shaped to look like the Alamo, the traditional symbol of our city, and the one that is gone now was fashioned after a Spanish mission. We’ll check out each of them individually.

We’ll start with the Southern Pacific Station, sometimes called the Sunset Station because of the train route called the Sunset Limited. This route has been operating for more than 130 years, running from New Orleans through San Antonio and on to Los Angeles. The station is made of brick and adobe, and its façade is shaped with the Alamo’s curvature. It was completed in 1902, but it looks as good now as it ever did, thanks to two recent restorations – one in the late 1980s and another in the late 1990s. Here’s the north side, which is the main façade:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1329/558242268_ed40d1c693.jpg?v=1182038422

And below is a closer look at the stained glass window you noticed in the first view of the building’s north side – it shows the Southern Pacific’s logo for its Sunset Limited route, with rails heading into the setting sun, bringing the train towards Los Angeles. The window is 16 feet in diameter:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/198/497033787_fbc8aa82ab.jpg?v=0

Once each year of the 1980s decade, I brought my children from Arlington, Virginia to visit my family in San Antonio, and we always came by train. The train always used the Southern Pacific Station, so we got to see the SP Station both before and after its restoration, and I can vouch firsthand for what a wonderful a job the restorers did. For example, here’s the magnificent interior – the first time I saw this in the late 1980s after its major restoration, I was flabbergasted:

http://www.stlouisnrhs.org/images/pastevents/sanantonio2002/DCP_2347.JPG

The staircase you see in the photo immediately above is on the south side of the building. Remember that the window with the Sunset logo was on the north side, so it’s behind the photographer taking this interior picture. The staircase on the south side has its own glorious stained glass window, which looks like this:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/204/497005028_6f5280a0a1.jpg?v=0

The Sunset Station is now used as an entertainment complex for weddings and other special events, rather than as a railroad station, and the railroad function has been shifted to another location nearby. That’s fine with me, because they keep the place looking as majestic as it ever has, and that’s the most important consideration. Here’s a website if you would be interested in what the Sunset Station is doing today, along with more pictures:

http://www.sunset-station.com/

The second masterpiece was initially called the International - Great Northern Station, but it was subsequently taken over by the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and changed its name accordingly. It was opened in 1908, and looked like this in its early days, as shown in an old post card – even more grand than the Southern Pacific Station:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/IGNStation2.jpg

You can see that this station used the façade of the Alamo as a model, just as was done for the Southern Pacific Station.

For just one of our visits to San Antonio during the 1980s, for some reason we were taken by bus from the Southern Pacific Station to the Missouri Pacific Station to meet those who were picking us up. The MP Station was in pretty sad shape at that time, but fortunately our arrival after midnight prevented us from seeing exactly how sad it was.

You may have noticed the Indian with a bow and arrow at the top of the station’s dome in the previous post card view. Well, when we saw the station in all its degraded glory, the Indian wasn’t even there. Apparently, the figure was taken by some mysterious individual, but was later brought back and re-installed in a restored condition. The mystery has never been solved.

In 1988, the entire building was restored and put back into service as a bank, so it will be kept in good shape now. On one of my later visits to San Antonio, we made it a point to stop in and see the bank that had once been a railroad station. Here’s a watercolor my sister made of the station converted to a bank, with modern lighting fixtures and a parking lot. You can even see the Indian with his bow and arrow perched atop the dome, better in the watercolor than in the earlier post card:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/MissouriPacificStationWatercolor.jpg

And here’s the Indian stained glass window that is situated over a staircase, just like the window over the staircase that we discussed before in the Southern Pacific Station:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/mpstationindianwindow.jpg

This beautiful Indian window was re-created entirely by San Antonio native Joe Juarez, using old photographs, because the original window had disappeared when the station was abandoned. Mr. Juarez is a good friend of my high school Latin teacher, John Michel, who was so instrumental in my life many years ago when I was wrestling with those translations of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, as well as non-academic items that teenagers typically struggle with.

The third masterpiece was the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Station, abbreviated as MKT, which led to the nickname Katy. Some railroad station aficionados consider the Katy Depot to be the most beautiful station ever built in the South. It was completed in 1917 and was patterned after a Spanish mission in San Antonio – which we’ll visit in the next episode. The station was often mistaken for a church, and you can see why in this picture from a post card:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/MKTStationExt.jpg

The interior walls were Moorish tile in a southwestern mosaic design. Apparently nobody can come up with photographs of the interior, other than what’s shown on the following post card which has both the exterior and the interior. I’m sure interior photos exist somewhere, but they aren’t posted on the internet.

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/mktstationintandext.jpg

As a 12-year old child in May, 1955, I went with my family to visit relatives in Chicago. This was the only time I traveled outside of Texas until I eventually left the state to go off to college. We took the MKT for that trip to Chicago, and we used this station. I still remember both the station and the train ride quite clearly. In fact, I think I remember the station and the ride as well as I remember our day at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where we saw the Cubs play the New York Giants on May 15 in the first major league game we had ever seen in person.

The Katy Depot was demolished in 1969 and was replaced by a hotel. I don’t even want to know what that hotel looks like.

Here’s an interesting website that has further information on each of the San Antonio railroad stations for anybody who would like more than what I’ve summarized here:

http://www.trainweb.org/stations/

Next up: the Spanish missions of San Antonio.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 4

The Alamo is just one of the Spanish missions that adorn the San Antonio landscape, and it is better known than the others only because of the battle that was fought there. The other four missions are San José, Concepción, San Juan Capistrano, and Espada. Despite being almost 300 years old, they all remain as active parishes even today and mass is still said every week. Together, they provide the greatest concentration of missions in the country. California has many missions also, but they are more widely scattered.

We’ll go over each of the San Antonio missions individually.

Mission San José was founded in 1720 and is the largest of the missions in San Antonio. On Sundays, the mission holds a mariachi mass.

Here is a view of the exterior – note from this distant perspective the ornate façade on the left side of the photo:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/sanjosemission1.jpg

Here’s just the main entrance:

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/af64b224-c47d-4f4a-bfd4-bdd2d70587bf.jpg

And a view from the side of the building:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/sanjosemission2.jpg

The most famous single feature of San José is its Rose Window. Here’s a close up so you can see the detail for which it’s noted:

http://photos.igougo.com/images/p117358-San_Antonio-Mission_San_Jose.jpg

The solemn altar:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y103/Hank_F_M/San Antonio 2007/SanJoseMissionSAaltar.jpg

Mission Concepción’s full name is Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña, but that’s quite a mouthful so we just call it Mission Concepción. It started out in East Texas in 1716, but moved to San Antonio in 1731. It is considered the best preserved of the Texas Missions.

This building provided the inspiration for the design of the Katy Depot that we discussed in the previous episode. Note the twin towers in the following views, and remember that the Katy Depot used to have twin towers before some genius turned it into a pile of rubble and carted the debris off to a dump somewhere:

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicc/cfiles23345.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/missionconcepcion.jpg

The mission’s sanctuary:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1115/854517675_1eb01da888.jpg?v=0

A pretty lady restoring one of the ceiling frescoes:

http://www.restorationassociates.com/photos/PamMissionConcep.jpg

An arched porch where the friars could relax at the end of a hard day:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1006/577670615_db1ef05f58.jpg?v=0

Just like Mission Concepción, Mission San Juan Capistrano started out in East Texas, but moved to San Antonio in 1731. Note that there is another mission with that same name in California, the one to which swallows return on a certain date every year – but that one has absolutely nothing to do with our San Antonio mission.

A triple belltower is the mission’s most distinctive feature:

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/41ebe28c-920a-4dff-adae-beac9e265d1c.jpg

Here’s how the belltower fits in with the rest of the façade:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1405/578392713_656f808a8a.jpg?v=0

And you can see from this angle that there actually is more than just a façade:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1382/811251126_6223851a32.jpg?v=0

But I can’t find any good interior photos of this mission, so we’ll move on to the last of the four.

Mission San Francisco de la Espada was first established elsewhere, but moved to San Antonio in 1731. We just call it Mission Espada. That must have been a very good year for mission-moving companies because this makes the third mission to re-locate to San Antonio in that same year.

This mission also has a triple belltower, just like San Juan Capistrano’s, but Espada’s is on its narrow façade. Capistrano’s belltower is on its wider façade:

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/87f17fea-f315-4b0d-bd57-45735d0374f2.jpg

The mission’s doorway is one of its more popular features:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1377/635777066_ebab2d6ff1_o.jpg

As was the case for San Juan Capistrano, I can’t find any interior photos of Espada.

If you would care to explore the missions in greater detail, here’s a good place to start:

http://www.nps.gov/saan/

Next up: our major department store Joske’s, the Menger Hotel, Travis Park, La Villita, and the Buckhorn Saloon.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 5

New York City may have its Macy’s and Gimbel’s Department Stores, Philadelphia may have its Wanamaker’s, and Chicago may have its Marshall Fields. But we in San Antonio had our Joske’s, just a block from the Alamo. The store first opened in 1867, long before my family was around. In 1939, it was given this art deco façade which still lasts today, although unfortunately it doesn’t say Joske’s anymore:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/joskes.jpg

You may have noticed the spire of a church on the far side of the store in the view above. That’s Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church, which refused to give up its ground when the store was enlarged, and the church sits with the store surrounding it on three sides. The church is still unofficially called Saint Joske’s, even though the store itself is now Dillard’s:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3019/2408009666_513d19a83f.jpg?v=0

We didn’t go to Joske’s very often, but when we did, it was something very special. There were five floors, including a basement, and there were both escalators and elevators available to move people from one floor to another. I remember the escalators best, because seeing these monsters for the first time at age six, I was greatly concerned about getting trapped at the point where the moving stairway plates met the stationary floor at each end. I was always careful to take a huge step to avoid getting trapped here, and I never got stuck – not even once.

The elevators were still run by operators in those days, and the operator would announce the departments on each floor as he approached that floor. I guess with technology being what it was in those days, the elevator operator was quite necessary because the floor of the elevator cab rarely wound up even with the floor of the store, and he always had to make some fine-tuning adjustments to get the two floors flush with each other.

Credit cards were still a thing of the future at that time, but there were these primitive things called charga-plates that were the forerunners of credit cards. I remember that Mother had a charga-plate from Joske’s, and also one from Sears which was a mile or so from Joske’s. Here’s what the Joske’s charga-plate looked like:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/joskeschargaplate.jpg

While I was still in the process of writing this, I learned that Dillard’s is shutting down their Rivercenter store – the site where Joske’s used to be. Tentative plans seem to include either retail or residential, so I guess they’re still trying to work out a solution. I’ll try to stay on top of that situation as it evolves. This building is a treasure to those who grew up in San Antonio.

Sandwiched between the Alamo and Joske’s is the Menger Hotel, which is most famous for accommodating Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders just before they left for Cuba to make their acclaimed charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Rough Riders trained in San Antonio for their role in the war.

Here’s what the Menger looks like from the outside:

http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~schuckwj/hstntx/06111603.jpg

And its very nice lobby:

http://www.cs.uta.fi/research/hci/gaze/photos/etra04/Menger-inside.jpg

Here, from the hotel’s own website, is a ‘movie’ showing the lobby:

http://mengerhotel.com/page/ntm6/Lobby_View_CircleView.html

Travis Park was once part of the Alamo grounds, back in the days when the Alamo was still a Spanish mission. The park is just two blocks from the Alamo. It features a statue representing a typical soldier of the Civil War:

http://www.sanantonio.gov/sapar/images/traviswideshot.jpg

A closer view of the statue:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2407/2481479483_2298750ce1.jpg?v=0

La Villita is on the bank of the San Antonio River, and is a one-block art community of restored old buildings dating from the 18th century, featuring unusual crafts. I remember this as being the first place I ever saw glass-blowing when I went there on a school field trip, and was amazed at watching that. There don’t seem to be any more glass blowers there in La Villita proper these days, but there is one a few blocks away.

Here are some scenes.

http://www.travel-watch.com/images/LaVillita3-AlRendon.jpg

Here’s a restaurant in La Villita, the Guadalajara Grill:

http://www.guadalajaragrill.us/villita-street.jpg

And a watercolor of that same Guadalajara Grill:

http://lavillita.com/images/wc/GuadalajaraGrill.jpg

La Villita has its own website for anyone who would like additional information on its unique stores and crafts:

http://www.lavillita.com/

San Antonio has been noted for its Buckhorn Saloon since 1881, but it’s moved a few times. It started out on Houston Street, and moved to the Lone Star Brewery in 1956, and returned to Houston Street in 1998. It’s full of horns and trophy mounts of various horned animals, and even some animals without horns. In its new location, it has been expanded to include a very interesting museum, including the Hall of Texas History Wax Museum. The bar, made of walnut and carved cherry, is said to date from 1890, and is beautifully preserved.

The place made its reputation based on its Hall of Horns:

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n214/bevin80/Saloon.jpg

Here’s the official website of the Buckhorn, if you’d care to get any more information:

http://www.buckhornmuseum.com/

And I didn’t even know about the new Texas Ranger Museum which opened in 2007, next door to the Buckhorn, until I did the research to write this piece:

http://www.rangermuseum.com/

Next up: Municipal Auditorium, the Telephone Building, San Antonio Zoo, Sunken Gardens, Playland Park, and Kiddieland Park.

[AuntShecky]

Another useful and informative thread, Mr. Z.
Your writing style is unique in that it consistently displays
your personality, without being intrusive.

I've never been to San Antonio myself, but others who have been there have told me that the Alamo itself is a bit
surprising in that the structure itself is not as tall as they had envisioned it to be.

The section about the movie theatre is first rate. It's a shame that the ornate theatres of the past with their individualized architectural splendor and stately interiors are alas, a thing of the past. You'd be hard-pressed to find theatres that used to be "downtown" in most cities. Same with old fashioned department stores, such as the one you vividly described. Today, movie theatres are multi-screen boxes attached to malls which are mostly located way the heck out in the suburbs. Nowadays it costs a movie goer at least $10 per ticket (and $14 for "Imax" events!)-- and that's not including the price of the popcorn! For the price of a ticket one has to sit through commercials and listen to the conversations of one's fellow movie-goers (who must've have forgotten that they're no longer watching TVin their living rooms and that other folks would like to hear the dialogue in the soundtrack.)
I bet I sound like a curmudgeon here, don't I?

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 6

The Municipal Auditorium was built in 1926 as a memorial to veterans of the Great War. Here’s what it looks like in a post card from my younger days:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/municipalauditorium.jpg

I remember it best as the venue where I saw my first circus – in 1949 or thereabouts. We always went to the Shriners’ circus in those days, and we would come home wearing child-size red fezzes and carrying a nice glossy program that described all the circus acts. I would read that program for weeks afterward, and would look at all the exciting pictures of the trapeze artists and tight-rope walkers. Those were the only circuses I ever really marveled at, although they were probably less impressive than today’s Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey extravaganzas. There is a magic of childhood that is lost as we mature, which is a shame. I’ve taken my children to the circus, and my grandchildren, but the experience just doesn’t come close to matching what I remember as a child.

I also gave my first and last piano recital on the same evening in one of the small halls flanking the central main section of the Auditorium. And Elvis Presley’s first San Antonio concert on January 15, 1956 was here, although I didn’t go. The last time I was inside the Auditorium was for my high school graduation, which was in 1961. I’ve been back to see the building’s exterior since then, but that’s all.

The interior was totally gutted by a fire in 1979, and the building sat idle for a while, much to my chagrin. I was elated when I heard it was renovated and modernized, re-opening in 1985. Despite its modernization on the inside, it still has that grandeur of days gone by on the outside.

And whenever we would go to the Municipal Auditorium, I would always go over and check out the beautiful Telephone Building nearby. I was totally amazed at the intricate figures down at eye level, and they went all the way up to the top as well. I never realized that the Medical Arts Building had all the ornamentation that I pointed out in the first episode until I did the research necessary for writing this story. But I was fully aware of the Telephone Building’s decorations, and I never missed a chance to go over and admire them. First, here’s the building from a distance, in the form of a post card – notice the adornments even if you can’t see their details:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/TelephoneBuilding.jpg

Here’s the only picture I can find on the internet showing some of those details:

http://www.artco.org/anim/museums.jpg

When I was young, San Antonio Zoo was always ranked as one of the top zoos in the country, and special note was always made of the fact that very few animals were kept in cages, and almost all of them were shown in natural habitats. It’s still a fantastic zoo, but I think lots of other zoos have now achieved natural habitats as well. The zoo officially opened in 1914, thanks to land donated by Colonel George Brackenridge. It is built in a former rock quarry, so there are lots of natural habitat sites. Here is an example showing bears, but almost all of the animals are in sites like this:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/bearpit.jpg

For many years, Monkey Island was the favorite spot in the whole zoo for all the children, because there was a collection of at least 100 monkeys running around all over the place, and there’s just no limit on the fun that 100 monkeys can have for themselves, or what they can provide to delight the onlookers. Here’s what it looked like:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/monkeyisland.jpg

Sadly, I learned on my most recent visit to San Antonio Zoo (in 2008) that Monkey Island is no more. In fact, the zoo planners were so thorough in re-doing it, we couldn’t even tell where it used to be.

Here’s the official website if you want to know more about the zoo:

http://www.sazoo-aq.org/

Integral with the zoo is the surrounding Brackenridge Park, and a fixture in the park is the Brackenridge Eagle, a miniature railroad that has delighted children for many years, including myself as a child, and many years later, my children.

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/brackenridgeeagle.jpg

Next door to the zoo is what we always called the Sunken Gardens, but which was also known as the Japanese Tea Garden. However, during World War II it was changed to the Chinese Sunken Garden. It kept that name until reverting back to the Japanese Tea Garden in 1984.

The Garden was first established in 1914, along with the beginnings of the neighboring zoo that we just finished talking about. The Garden was built to include walkways, stone arch bridges, an island, and a Japanese pagoda. The gardens were given a thorough grooming early in 2008, and are really looking fantastic these days.

Here are two post card views:

http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/images/card21.jpg

http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/images/card22.jpg

Back in the days before Disneyland, Disneyworld, and all the other modern theme parks, we in San Antonio had Playland Park. It was best known for its roller coaster – ominously called The Rocket, which began thrilling us all in 1947. Here’s what it looked like:

http://www.coasterphotos.com/Playland/images/Rocket3a.jpg

My first experience with The Rocket came when I was on my very first date of my entire life, and we went to Playland. I guess I was walking in a fog and allowed myself to be talked into riding the roller coaster. Well, The Rocket at Playland was about the biggest roller coaster I could imagine because the only one I had ever ridden before was The Little Dipper a few blocks down Broadway at Kiddieland Park. Kiddieland was designed for children up to about seven years in age, and we’ll take a quick peek at that park in a minute.

It all seemed very tame as Linda and I slowly made our initial ascent in the third car, and I began wondering what was supposed to be so thrilling. When we reached the top I found out in a hurry! I looked downward in the direction of the track but I couldn’t see any track! I gripped the restraining bar with all the strength I had, and my face must have gone white as I figured my life was about to end in a mass of splintered wood and twisted rails. I sneaked a peek at Linda who was apparently a veteran of many rides on this very roller coaster, as she thought nothing of the ordeal and was even laughing. She was probably laughing more at the enjoyment of the ride than at my reaction to it, I suppose, but I wasn’t really sure. How embarrassing a situation to find oneself in during a first date! I held on to the bar for dear life throughout the entire ride, which I hoped would get less frightening as it proceeded, but it didn’t. I’m pretty sure my knees were still shaking for at least a half hour after we got off.

The park closed down in 1980, and The Rocket just sat there doing nothing. Eventually, Knoebels Amusement Park & Resort in Elysburg, Pennsylvania bought the wooden roller coaster and moved it from San Antonio to Elysburg. It’s been operating since 1985 in Pennsylvania, and it’s now called The Phoenix. It’s one of the more popular roller coasters in the whole country, according to the aficionados of coasters, who apparently make quite a science of these rides. Here’s what it looks like in Pennsylvania, in the snow which it didn’t see much of in San Antonio:

http://www.aceeasternpa.org/rides/pictures/phoenix_3958.jpg

Here are some more photos of The Rocket – click on each thumbnail to see a larger view:

http://www.coasterphotos.com/Playland/rocket.htm

And here's a virtual ride:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51emil9njQw

We used to go watch fireworks on the Fourth of July, which were set off at Playland Park. We would park somewhere near the Butter Krust Bakery on Broadway and watch fantastic fireworks that were actually much better than those of today, if I remember correctly. Unless I’m totally mistaken on this, the fireworks back then didn’t just go up in the air and launch streamers of color like they do now. They would make designs in the sky like American flags with stars and stripes, or animals, or lots of other actual pictures. I don’t know why they don’t do that anymore.

All kids who grew up in San Antonio remember Kiddieland Park, right down Broadway just a few blocks from Playland. It had a small Ferris wheel, as well as a merry-go-round:

http://www.ruby-june.com/gallery2/d/634-1/DSCF1078.JPG

But one of its more popular rides was another roller coaster, The Little Dipper, which was no match for its big brother The Rocket at Playland, as I eventually learned:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1195/764021797_b0d9b352f2.jpg?v=0

And what with this being Texas and all, we were expected to get an early leg up on horseback riding, and Kiddieland helped us do that:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/horsesatkiddieland.jpg

And even though NASCAR didn’t exist yet (as far as I know), we still had to be trained at Kiddieland in anticipation of its eventual popularity:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/racecarsatkiddieland.jpg

Next up: San Pedro Park, some of our favorite restaurants, and the Central Library of my day - the one on Market Street downtown.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 7

San Pedro Park is second in age only to the Boston Common, which was established in 1630. Our San Pedro Park dates back to 1709. I didn’t even know that fact until a couple of years ago when I wrote a story that included the Boston Common, and learned that the Boston park is the only one in the country that’s older than ours. A couple of views of San Pedro Park:

http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/images/sanpedro.jpg

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/mcquien/htmlfils/dscn0373.jpg

Our mother would often tell us stories about when she was growing up near San Pedro Park with the rest of her large family. She told us about Uncle Arthur, who liked to be tied up and thrown into the swimming pool at San Pedro Park, apparently in an effort to prove Houdini had nothing on him. He always came back to the surface, but never went on tour like Houdini.

When I was a teenager, which was quite a while ago - back in the 1950s - there was a favorite restaurant hangout for some of us. It wasn’t quite like that place called Arnold’s in the TV series Happy Days, because lots of adults went there too. The place was most famous for their fried chicken, their chicken-fried steak, and their pies, although they had just about every kind of food imaginable for a traditional American type establishment.

As a teenager, I was at the point where I thought it was great to learn from the old hands all the clever new tricks like loosening the tops on salt shakers and sugar dispensers so that when the next person tried to use them, he would be in for a big surprise. Another trick my mentors taught me was how to invert a full glass of water on the table so that the glass couldn’t be removed without a big spill. Looking back on all that, it seems quite ridiculous that I ever pulled those infantile stunts, but I guess we all have to grow up sometimes.

The restaurant, called Earl Abel’s, was built in 1933 so it had quite a few years of operating experience before I first stepped into it in about 1956 or so. I’m sure they had already learned to deal with juvenile delinquents like me long before I turned my first glass of water upside down.

Earl Abel’s was demolished in early 2006 to make way for a new high-rise condominium in the relentless march of progress. But here’s what it looked like before it was demolished, in a post card which shows the exterior sandwiched between two interior views.

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/earlabels.jpg

And a watercolor by my sister, who does lots of San Antonio landmarks:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/earlabelswatercolor.jpg

La Fonda on Main Avenue is the Mexican restaurant where we went most often when I was growing up. There was a nice-looking man to greet us at the door, and he was always immaculately dressed in a beautiful suit. He took our names to place us in the waiting list, which he kept in a stenographer’s notebook, and there were always a lot of names because it was a very popular place. I still watch eBay every now and then to see if one of those notebooks will turn up, but no such luck so far. I was able to get a La Fonda menu on eBay – it dates from about 1950 based on the prices – but no steno notebooks showing who was waiting in line at La Fonda on any particular day.

Anyway, we always had to wait in the waiting room, sitting quietly on the wickerwork furniture that was painted green, for what always seemed like hours before they called our name. But it was probably just a few minutes because none of us ever starved to death, or even came close.

Here’s what La Fonda looks like, and I’m happy to say looks rather than looked because, thankfully, it’s still there and thriving, although under new management:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/lafonda.jpg

And then there was Christie’s, on Broadway, which is the seafood restaurant where I always got the fried shrimp dinner for $1.10 – that came with French fries and a wedge of iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing on it. But that was in the 1950s so it’s not really as cheap as it sounds. And those shrimp were really big too! Either that, or I was really little. It was so long ago that I don’t remember which of those it was. But I’ve never found a place that can match Christie’s for fried shrimp.

Sadly, the restaurant is now long gone. Its unique sign showing a fish in a frying pan was kept in place years after the restaurant closed, but now the sign is gone too. Here’s what it all looked like back when we used to go there:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/christies.jpg

And its menu from the late 1950s, when the price of the fried shrimp platter had been jacked up to $1.25, from the $1.10 that I remember:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/christiesmenu.jpg

We used to go to Tai Shan on Broadway occasionally, and I remember that my sister liked it a lot. I had a mental block against Chinese food at that time, and Tai Shan in particular, although Chinese is one of my favorites now. The reason I resisted liking it back then was the waiter we had my first trip there to Tai Shan. I don’t know exactly what it was, but there was something wrong with one of his eyes that made me shiver. He should have had a patch covering it, and it wasn’t just a temporary condition, although I can’t remember exactly what it was.

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/taishan.jpg

The San Antonio Library System was always great about sending bookmobiles around town, and I was elated that one would come about a block from our house. But these bookmobiles had very limited selections, and I always looked forward to being able to go downtown to the Central Library on Market Street. It was a big thrill when I was allowed to take the bus downtown by myself, probably when I was about twelve. I was then able to go to the library without having anyone in the family telling me we had to leave. I remember that we weren’t allowed to go through the stacks at this library, but instead, we would give the librarian a piece of paper listing the books we wanted. In a few minutes, that librarian would bring us whatever books we had asked for. Here’s the library, and I’m pretty sure there was a single lion immortalized in stone out front, but it’s masked by the black car in this post card:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/carnegiepubliclibrary.jpg

When the library moved to larger quarters in 1968, the building became the Hertzberg Circus Museum, all the wonderful books were replaced by displays and memorabilia from various old circuses. And the lion statue out front was replaced by one of an elephant. Fortunately, I had left town by then and didn’t have to see my beloved library changed in this way. To me, this building was a library, and it's hard to visualize it as being anything else. By the way, the Hertzberg Circus Museum has since moved on to somewhere else, and the old library building is now being prepared to serve as a western art gallery and museum.

Next up: The Transit Tower, the Nix Hospital, the Bexar County Courthouse, City Hall, San Fernando Cathedral, and the Shrine of the Little Flower.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 8

We in San Antonio didn’t have the Empire State Building or the Woolworth Building that New York had. What we have is what I still call the Transit Tower because I’m so old. But it was called the Smith-Young Tower when it first opened, and now it’s called the Tower-Life Building.

It was completed in 1929, and with 30 floors it was the most recognizable part of the San Antonio skyline for almost 40 years. Whenever returning to San Antonio by plane for a visit, I always watched for the Transit Tower to welcome me home, and it always did so in a grand way.

The building is visible from all kinds of directions because of its height, but it looks particularly good from the river:

http://endodontics.uthscsa.edu/images/Satx1.jpg

And in this vintage post card:

http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/gallery/1209913465/gallery_1_86_7440.jpg

The Tower of the Americas, which reaches much higher, came along in 1968. Also, the Tower of the Americas has a more distinctive shape than the Transit Tower. But that newer tower wasn’t there during my youth, nor were all the even newer structures that are now coming along in the unrelenting march of time. But none of these have the same feel, to me at least, as the stately old Transit Tower.

It has a magnificent elevator lobby – they don’t build them like this anymore:

http://www.safamilylaw.com/images/karen.jpg

Here are some details of the building’s gargoyles by sarider1, who has posted an incredible collection of San Antonio photographs:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/117915665/in/set-72157600328739199/

And finally, here’s the skyline I mentioned, in watercolor form, from my sister’s portfolio:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/sananskylinewatercolor.jpg

All of my siblings and I were born at the Nix Hospital, which opened in 1930, and is another downtown landmark. Its architecture is described as art deco. It looks best from the river in this post card:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/nixhospital.jpg

And some close up details from sarider1’s fantastic photo collection:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/2318198888/in/set-72157600328739199/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/2317392737/in/set-72157600328739199/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/2318199882/in/set-72157600328739199/

The Bexar County Courthouse was completed in 1896, and I’ve always found it to be a very unique building. I believe that over its history, the natural red brick was painted white at least once, but was eventually restored to its better-looking natural state. I’ve never been inside it, so I don’t know if the interior matches the exterior in looking great.

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicv/vfiles16273.jpg

http://www.barnfield.net/texas/images/bexar.jpg

There is a statue of the namesake of San Antonio right outside the courthouse – San Antonio de Padua – or Saint Anthony of Padua:

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/54f0b060-31c6-4b84-9483-26a33e3ae160.jpg

And some details of the Courthouse by sarider1:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/614890628/in/set-72157600328739199/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83379080@N00/614890812/in/set-72157600328739199/

San Antonio’s City Hall is a classic building near the County Courthouse. So far, I haven’t been able to find any history on it, but I do know that it started out as a three-story building, and that a fourth was added many years after the initial construction. Here’s what the building looked like originally, in an old post card:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txpstcrd/Towns/SanAntonio/SanAntonioCityHall1908_2.jpg

And here’s what it looks like now, with the added level at the top replacing the ornamental headpieces that previously adorned the top of the structure:

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/8aee5d3b-1cbf-4885-a1ba-137ade3edc05.jpg

I think I liked the fancy things on top more than I like the fourth story.

A closer view, so you can see a little more detail about the building’s construction:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/cityhallnow.jpg

Right near City Hall stands the beautiful San Fernando Cathedral, which was started in 1738, almost 100 years before the Battle of the Alamo which took place a few blocks away. It was completed in 1749 and the original walls still stand today. The only United States cathedral older than San Fernando is the Baltimore Basilica. While the Catholic Basilica of Saint Augustine in Florida is the oldest parish in the country, its current structure wasn’t built until 1793, so it’s newer than San Fernando. However, there are four missions that we discussed in an earlier episode that are even older than this.

San Fernando Cathedral is still used for services, and over 5,000 people attend weekend mass each week. There must be several masses, because the seating capacity is quite limited.

Its exterior looks like this:

http://tmcnerney.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/cathedral-de-san-fernando.jpg

The exterior detail directly above the main entrance:

http://z.about.com/d/sanantonio/1/0/H/2/-/-/cathedral07.jpg

An interior view:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/JakeIronChapmanWalker/San Antonio Youthcue 2005/Moms San Antonio Youthcue 2005/026_23A.jpg

Holy water at San Fernando Cathedral:

http://www.rickdenney.com/images/holy-water-lores.jpg

If you some more information on the cathedral, you could check out its website:

http://www.sfcathedral.org/

Another active church in San Antonio is the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower. It’s one of very few in the country that bear the papal designation of minor basilica. The cornerstone was laid in 1929, and construction was completed in 1931. The church is exceptionally beautiful both outside and inside. However, I can’t seem to find any interior photos on the internet. And to top that all off, it’s now getting a thorough refurbishment.

Here are a few views of the exterior:

http://www.cavallinistudios.com/RestorationImages/BasilicaSanAntonio2_300.jpg

http://www.cavallinistudios.com/RestorationImages/BasilicaSanAntonio425.jpg

And a watercolor from someone other than my sister:

http://www.lundy-c-art.com/Little Flower Basilica.jpg

Here’s the shrine’s official website if you want more information:

http://www.littleflowerbasilica.org/

Next up: the Spanish Governor’s Palace, the Hertzberg Clock (a downtown fixture), and the King William District.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 9

Before the land now known as Texas became a part of the United States, it went through lots of hands with respect to countries who controlled it. One of the earlier owners was Spain, and the Spanish Governor’s Palace in San Antonio remains as one of the sites that local schoolchildren have to see on their field trips. And lots of tourists go there too. The National Geographic Society has called the place “the most beautiful building in San Antonio,” but I think there are lots of buildings that are much better. Maybe the National Geographic reporter who said that was delirious, or was speaking of the situation in 1730 or something. The palace was built in 1722 when Spain still controlled this area.

The palace is a very simple one-story building made of masonry and stucco with ten rooms, as well as a courtyard with a garden and fountain. Some people think the fountain is haunted by a former resident but I never personally encountered any ghosts in the few times I went there.

No Spanish Governors have ever lived here, although Spanish government officials did. Nobody seems to know how the name of the building came to be what it is.

The palace’s front, so you can see it’s relatively simple:

http://www.sanantonio.gov/dtops/governorspalace.JPG

Here’s the nice table and bowl for the hors d’oeuvres the Spanish officials used when they were entertaining someone in the sitting room:

http://photos.igougo.com/images/p89504-San_Antonio-Daily_Items.jpg

A carved wooden chest of drawers:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2028/2380467639_d2f4844ae5.jpg?v=0

And the garden’s lovely fountain, which is thought to be haunted by a former resident:

http://www.soulofthegarden.com/Images/GovernorsPalaceCourtyardMed.jpg

Lots of cities have famous clocks that actually achieve their fame by serving as meeting places. All you have to do if you are in one of those cities is say “Meet me under the clock at 2 PM” and you’re all set. There is even a 1945-vintage movie starring Judy Garland, about a clock that was used as a rendezvous point. The movie’s name is The Clock, referring to a timepiece located in New York City’s Pennsylvania Station, which fortunately was still standing at the time the movie was filmed. The station didn’t get leveled until many years later, and I don’t know what happened to Penn Station’s clock during the demolition process.

Well, these big cities with special rendezvous clocks have nothing on San Antonio, as we have our Hertzberg Clock, and it’s still there and it’s still working. It has been situated at the corner of St. Mary’s and Houston Streets since 1910. The clock was made in 1878 and started out on Commerce Street before moving to Houston Street. It is entirely mechanical and has to be wound by hand, despite today’s technology which allows batteries to keep things going. It belonged to the Hertzberg Jewelry Company, and despite the fact that the company is no longer in business, the clock is still owned and maintained by Hertzberg family members. Here’s where you had to be if someone said “Meet me under the clock.”

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg314/jh1882/houston_street/3-9-08379.jpg

The King William Historic District is just south of San Antonio’s downtown area. It was established in the 1840s by German immigrants. The name came along after the district’s development was pretty far along and it honors Kaiser Wilhelm I, who was King of Prussia in the 1870s. In fact, the main entry street was initially called Kaiser Wilhelm Avenue, but during the Great War it was changed to Pershing Avenue. A few years after the war the street’s name went back to King William Street, the Americanized version of the Kaiser’s name.

This area is filled with beautiful homes, but in the 1920s, residents for some reason started moving out of the district and to other parts of the city. During the 1930s and ‘40s, the neighborhood really went downhill. In the 1950s, people started waking up to the fact that there were some very nice houses here, and to make it even better, the neighborhood was very conveniently located just a few minutes from downtown. In 1967, the King William District became the first area to be designated as a Historic Neighborhood District in the entire state, and improvements started rolling.

Here are some of the magnificent houses, all of which are well maintained now:

The George Kalteyer House, built in 1892:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/2694906360_721f667d3c.jpg?v=0

And the same house as portrayed in a watercolor from my sister’s portfolio:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/kingwilliamhousewatercolor.jpg

Norman Polk Mathis House, dating from 1876:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3234/2694880444_4ed7cf91e5.jpg?v=0

And a couple for which I don’t have names:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/45/109939174_856ed02d45_b.jpg

http://www.rickdenney.com/images/steves-house-lores.jpg

Next up: San Antonio’s still active newspaper building - also an architectural classic - and three of our museums.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 10

Anybody who has reached this point in this ongoing story, has already figured out that I really like buildings. And our two newspaper buildings are no exception. We don’t have the New York Times or the Washington Post, but in San Antonio we always had the San Antonio Express, the San Antonio News, and the San Antonio Light. Well, the Light shut down in 1992 and the Express and News, which were always in the same family, finally joined at the hip and became one in the mid-1980s. From then on, it was called the Express-News.

The San Antonio Express-News Building was completed in 1929, which must have been the best single year for landmark construction the city has ever seen. In that same year, the Majestic Theater and the Smith-Young Tower (later called the Transit Tower, and even later than that, the Tower-Life Building) were both built.

My favorite of all our school field trips in the early 1950s, even more so than the Spanish missions or the Butter Krust Bakery or the WOAI television station, was our visit to the San Antonio Express-News Building. We got to see how incoming news was received via teletype from the wire services, how the linotype machines set the type, and how the pages were laid out. Then we got to see the huge printing machines with the endless rolls of paper feeding through, and the bundling machines that wrapped up about fifty papers into a single bundle. And at the end of the tour, we watched the bundles get loaded onto trucks for distribution, and we watched these trucks drive off into the city.

The Express-News Building is a scaled down copy of the Chicago Tribune Building. The building sits behind the Alamo Plaza Post Office and Courthouse that we looked at in the first episode. Most of the Express-News Building is five stories, but there is a two-story octagonal spire at the forward corner, and a penthouse with a two-story ceiling capped by an octagonal clerestory on top of that spire. Here’s what the building looks like:

http://k43.pbase.com/o6/29/26729/1/70923162.iblPaxVS.building1.jpg

You might have noticed over the main entrance there’s some artwork. It’s a frieze entitled The Enlightening of the Press, by a sculptor named Pompeo Coppini. This is the same sculptor who created the Alamo Cenotaph that we visited in the first episode. Here’s a closer view, but we’ll get even closer in the next shot after this.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3104/2638325276_a23d5e207f.jpg?v=0

Getting a little closer in the picture below, we can see that there are six figures, which represent labor, education, knowledge, enlightenment, truth, and justice, proceeding from left to right.

http://www.archsculptbooks.com/03 big Pompeo_coppini_at_express-news_bldg_san_antonio.jpg

The conference room walls are decorated with front page plates from newspapers around the world for October 29, 1929, often called Black Tuesday, which was the worst single day of the drawn-out New York Stock Exchange crash that eventually brought on the Great Depression.

Battersby Ornamental, the company we discussed earlier who helped restore the Majestic and Aztec Theaters, also helped restore the conference room ceiling in the newspaper building. The original ornate coffered conference room ceiling was hidden by a new false ceiling in the 1960s to route electrical wires and piping/ducting systems. Accommodating new technology such as computers and air conditioning is often a problem with classical old buildings, and this kind of crime – hiding beautiful old features so that cables and pipes can be run – is unfortunately a common practice. But with ingenuity, other ways can be found to accommodate the cables and pipes, and Battersby Ornamental restored the ceiling in 1999 so now it can be seen again in all its glory.

Here is a before restoration picture of one of the ceiling panels, alongside an after restoration version of that same panel, with an explanation of what was done during the work:

http://www.battersbyornamental.com/exnwsclng.htm

The San Antonio Light was our other paper, but it closed down in 1992. It also had a beautiful building that still stands, but I can only find the following two pictures of it on the internet, and one of these is really tiny.

The building’s front [this picture has vanished from the internet, but I'm hoping to get a picture of my own during my upcoming visit to San Antonio]:

http://www2.mysanantonio.com/aboutus/expressnews/style/salight.gif

A detail up at the top:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1125/1087879635_a2679a8944.jpg?v=0

The San Antonio Museum of Art opened in 1981, using the former Lone Star Brewery complex of buildings, thanks to funding provided by local citizens and businesses. At first, the museum specialized in the art of North, Central, and South America, with an emphasis on Spanish Colonial and Latin American folk art. There were also some 18th, 19th, and 20th century American and European art. In 1985, the holdings expanded significantly when former US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Robert K. Winn contributed their collections of Latin American folk art to the museum. The museum has steadily expanded since its inception, and now includes a comprehensive collection of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Chinese artworks, and an Asian art wing has been added.

The former brewery buildings are actually attractive – they look better in person than in this photo - at least I think they do:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/FirstLoneStarBrewery.JPG

Just one example of the work on display here is an oil painting with intriguing colors and details, called Passing Storm over Sierra Nevadas by Albert Bierstadt:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Passing_Storm_over_the_Sierra_Nevada.jpg

I won’t go over any other specific artwork in this discussion, but below is the museum’s website, so you can explore for yourself what the museum offers, and go into depth on anything that interests you.

http://www.samuseum.org/main/

The Witte Museum is the only museum that I remember from my youth. We didn’t have the San Antonio Museum of Art yet, as it didn’t come along until 1981. The Witte’s permanent collections feature about 200,000 objects. There are history and science exhibits, traveling exhibits on loan from other museums, as well as lots of family events and live performances. The museum has an excellent anthropology collection with Native American objects, and lots of archaeological relics from different portions of Texas. There is also an extensive history collection of art, furniture, firearms, western memorabilia, and photographs.

The Hertzberg Circus Museum collection which was formerly displayed in the old library on Market Street downtown is now at the Witte, as the old library is currently being renovated to hold the Briscoe Western Art Museum. The Hertzberg collection has everything a circus featured over the years, but without live performers and without popcorn. There are old circus posters, calliopes cranking out circus music, Tom Thumb’s miniature carriage, a miniature circus, lion tamers’ chairs and whips, swords that used to be swallowed, and old photographs.

Here is the museum and its grounds as shown in a post card:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txpstcrd/Towns/SanAntonio/SanAntonioWitteMuseumBrackenridgePkCa1930.jpg

And a close-up view of the front entrance, highlighting the elephant that used to be in front of the Hertzberg Circus Museum on Market Street:

http://z.about.com/d/sanantonio/1/0/E/E/-/-/wittemuseumgallery.jpg

This being Texas and all, here’s a painting of Terry’s Texas Rangers:

http://www.terrystexasrangers.org/pictures/artwork/iwonski.jpg

And they have some pre-historic animals on display:

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t210/cybercliff/P1010742.jpg

Here’s the museum’s website if you would like more information:

http://www.wittemuseum.org/

The McNay Art Institute is housed in a former mansion in the Spanish-Mediterranean style, and opened in 1954. It has artworks from America and Europe, spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. It has lovely landscaping too, with Japanese gardens, fountains, streams, and goldfish ponds. The works include many by foreign artists such as van Gogh, Rodin, Degas, Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso. There are also several American artists’ works on display, including Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keefe. By checking the museum’s website, which we’ll point out later, you can see a listing of the works now on display, along with typical samples of paintings right there on your computer screen.

This watercolor by my sister is better than any of the exterior photos I can find on the internet. She is very good with lots of subjects, but I like her San Antonio scenes the best:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/mcnaywatercolor.jpg

Here’s a photo, which pales in comparison to the watercolor above:

http://community.nursingspectrum.com/MagazineArticles/Images/DestinationSanAntonio4_400x295.jpg

There is currently a display called Architecture in Print, featuring artworks that highlight buildings – one of my favorite topics. An example of the current exhibition is The Apse of Notre Dame of Paris by Charles Meryon:

http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/adw/gravely/meryon.jpg

And here’s the museum’s website if you want more information about what’s on display:

http://www.mcnayart.org/

Next up: some features of Alamo Heights – one of the city’s nicest, and oldest, neighborhoods.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 11

For as long as I can remember, there was a Mobil gas station at the intersection of Broadway and the Austin Highway. The building is still there today, but nobody comes racing out to fill up your tank, whisk-broom your car’s interior, or offer to check your oil and water like they used to do back then. But the Flying Horse is still there, and the place is now protected as a historical site. Here it is in a photograph:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/43/114120554_fa709f7966_o.jpg

Here it is in one of my sister’s watercolors:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/mobilstation1.jpg

And if you drove from the Mobil Station up Broadway toward downtown, you would soon come to Incarnate Word on your right.

The University of the Incarnate Word is an outgrowth of a mission that has been in San Antonio since 1869 – a mission that brought the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word to the city. The Sisters’ work led to the first hospital in the city – one that still exists – Santa Rosa Hospital. In 1900, the Academy of the Incarnate Word was moved to Alamo Heights, where it remains today. The institution achieved university status in 1996. Being Jewish, I was never heavily involved in Incarnate Word’s activities, but I always admired its beautiful buildings. Here is what they look like on a old post card:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/incarnateword.jpg

And the building holding the chapel is adorned with an intriguing spire guarded by four angels with trumpets:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/incarnatewordphoto.jpg

A closer look at the top of the spire with its angels:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2236/2190657019_2060f36617.jpg?v=0

Near the campus sits a beautiful old home called Fernridge, which was once the home of Colonel George W. Brackenridge and his sister Eleanor. The colonel had successfully drilled artesian water wells in San Antonio late in the 19th century and eventually became owner and president of the city’s waterworks, as well as a director of the San Antonio Express Publishing Company. He donated lots of land to the city, which includes the San Antonio Zoo and Brackenridge Park. The house now belongs to Incarnate Word, who continues to maintain it. Here’s what it looks like:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2104/2420542020_80531a3f70.jpg?v=0

If you would continue up Broadway toward downtown after checking out Incarnate Word, you would pass Earl Abel’s on your left, and then Christie’s Seafood Restaurant also on your left. In a few blocks you would see Kiddieland Park on your right, and soon you’d see Playland Park on your left. All these places were discussed in earlier episodes.

And a little after Playland, there on your right was the Butter Krust Bakery. Almost all San Antonio natives remember going to Butter Krust on school field trips. Even though we saw all this magnificent breadmaking machinery, the best part of the tour was the samples they gave us at the end. Now these samples weren't regular bread like they put in the packages we bought at the grocery, but were very thick slices. They were warm and had real butter - at that time we were only using margarine at home. Back then, it was Sun Valley margarine, which wasn't easily confused with butter like the margarine today can be. At least they didn't have any commercials that said 'tastes like butter,' nor should they have. The margarine back then tasted more like plastic than anything else.

At the Butter Krust place, they gave out souvenirs to take home, in addition to the samples that we ate. I remember getting pencils, a wooden ruler and several book covers, the classy ones with plastic coating that looked so much better than the brown ones we usually made from grocery bags. The Butter Krust book covers had the blue and white gingham pattern on them.

I remember seeing the Butter Krust delivery trucks in the parking lot of this bakery even in the mid-‘90s, and these trucks were identical to their trucks from the mid-‘50s. I never understood how they could continue getting the same trucks over such a long timespan. This building ceased operations in 1997 when the plant moved to a more modern site, and it now sits empty and idle, along with an empty and idle parking lot.

The Argyle House is another fixture in Alamo Heights. It was first a private residence, and then it became a hotel. Now it’s the home of the highly exclusive Argyle Club. The building was constructed in 1859 as a private home – and the headquarters for a horse ranch. It has been described as a “Calcutta-like club” because of its large white portico and spacious verandas framed by tall white columns. Here’s what it looks like in one of my sister’s watercolors:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/argylehousewatercolor.jpg

Alamo Stadium is the closest thing we have to Chicago’s Soldier Field – it’s where the San Antonio Independent School District schools play their football games – and also where the nearby Trinity University’s team plays. Here’s what it looks like in an old post card:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/alamostadium.jpg

And an overhead view of the place today with modern color coding of the spectators’ seats:

http://www.proven1.com/aerialphoto/AlamoStadium/AlamoStadium_08_20_06_email1.jpg

And the entrance, which still looks like it did back in my day:

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/392/sd530274aw7.jpg

Situated a block or two from the stadium was a small Mexican food takeout place that was always one of our favorites. It was called Teka Molino and I always loved their tacos, tamales, and tortillas. You could watch the ladies making the tortillas right there – kneading the dough and rolling the tortillas out on stones. I think our mother had gone to school with the owner and she always had a nice chat with him when we would stop in for some food.

I eventually learned during one of my visits back home after I moved away, that Teka Molino expanded and relocated to San Pedro. We went to the new place a few times, but they were making tortillas in a more modern way and everything was a lot more elaborate in the new place than it had been in the old one. I liked the old place better.

The Olmos Dam was built in 1927 because of a serious flood that the city suffered a few years earlier. In the 1940s and ‘50s we would drive across it, and look down at a golf course on one side, and wide open spaces on the other. The golf course isn’t there any more. Here are two post cards that give a pretty good shot of what we would see when viewing the dam – a view I always loved:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/olmosdam.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/68/203773871_64cba8e773.jpg?v=0

For my first three years of school, I went to the Alamo Heights Cambridge Elementary School a block off Broadway, although I have since learned that ‘off Broadway’ in San Antonio is different from ‘off Broadway’ in New York City. This school has the most beautiful façade of any school in San Antonio that I attended. For the first two years, I was in the little two-room building across the street, so I got to see this façade every day. Then for my third year, I was actually in this building:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/cambridgeschoolfacade.jpg

And I’m not even going to tell you the story about how my mother forgot to pick me up from my first day of school, because I’m now 66 years old and have finally forgiven her for that. Since I was the oldest child, she must not have been used to picking kids up at school, so I stood there on the corner for what seemed like hours, while everybody else was picked up one by one. After a while, I was the only one still waiting. Eventually she showed up – much to my relief.

Next up: the Freeman Coliseum, Cool Crest Miniature Golf Course, the San Pedro Drive-In Theater, and the Monte Vista neighborhood – with some of the city’s most beautiful houses.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 12

The Freeman Coliseum was the place we always associated with the rodeo, as the San Antonio Rodeo and Stock Exposition comes here every year. Here’s the building:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/Freeman_coliseum.jpg

And some scenes from the rodeo:

http://www.benadams.com/picturesALL/03132006bullridng_at_the_san_antonio_rodeo.JPG

http://www.tonyromoonline.org/images/national-finals-rodeo.jpg

http://www.news-journal.com/shared-gen/blogs/communities/rodeo/media/Friday-Rodeo-9.jpg

I always enjoyed the rodeo, probably almost as much as I enjoyed the circus that was held at the Municipal Auditorium, which we already discussed in an earlier episode. The rodeo clowns were great, although we didn’t realize they were putting their lives on the line to save the riders who were thrown from their mounts. We thought they were just being funny.

Actually, we could watch rodeo events almost year-round, even when the big one at the Coliseum was not in session. Near the airport, on what used to be called Loop 13 (it has since been changed to Loop 410 presumably so it won’t be unlucky), there was a large fenced-in area where rodeo performers learned and practiced their events. Back then the area on Loop 13 looked like the wide open spaces, and we could stop the car on the side of the loop overlooking the rodeo activity below, and watch for as long as we liked. If you tried that same thing today, in the same place, you’d be run over by cars moving at high speeds before you could even come to a full stop.

While the Coliseum was most closely associated with the rodeo, the rodeo wasn’t the only thing that happened here. For example, there was the fateful night that my Boy Scout troop ran in the chariot race during the annual Boy Scout Exposition. It must have been 1956 or ’57, and I’m figuring that since the movie Ben Hur came out in 1959, the producer must have gotten the idea for the movie’s chariot race from ours. We had spent several weekends making our chariot at the home of one of the scouts. And we were very careful to make sure that its wheels, which had come from someone’s old bicycle, would rotate freely on the chariot’s axle.

The night of the big race we were all dressed up like Romans in togas as we pulled our chariot to the starting line. We were off and running at the starting gun and pulled into an early lead. Coming around the final turn approaching the finish we still had a very large lead, but about 50 yards from the finish line, one of our wheels came off! We kept going anyway, dragging our now lopsided one-wheeled chariot, but our speed went down to nothing and most of the other chariots passed us.

The Cool Crest Miniature Golf Course was the best in the world. I think so even today, some 55 years after my first visit to Cool Crest, and I’ve seen miniature golf courses all over the country. It’s been there on Fredericksburg Road since 1937 – so it’s even older than me.

Here’s its sign:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1397/534162850_02906802a8.jpg?v=0

And here’s what a typical hole looks like:

http://www.decodistrict.org/images/Cool_Crest_-_Villareals_VVRZ.jpg

Other miniature golf courses have absolutely no trees or any kind of decorations – they just have straight golf holes, and you can see all 18 of them at the same time. At Cool Crest, you only see the one you’re playing, the last one you played, and maybe the one you’re going to play next. There is constant music coming from speakers in the trees all over the course. The only thing about Cool Crest I didn’t like was the fact that when you sank your final putt on the 18th hole, your ball went back to the office.

Not only did I have the pleasure of playing there during my youth, I was able to bring my kids to play there when we came back to town for a visit.

There were lots of drive-in movies in San Antonio, but we always went to the San Pedro Drive-In Theater, which wasn’t very far from our house. When we went as toddlers, we had a convertible with a large cavern behind the back seat for the convertible’s top to be stored. But as long as the top was up, there was enough room for three of us to squeeze into that storage spot. I guess our mother was guilty of teaching us to be criminals, because when we were hiding like that, she didn’t have to pay for us. I don’t remember exactly how many times we accidentally tried driving off before putting the speaker back onto its rack, but it was more than once.

And as teenagers, my brother and I would just ride our bikes over to the theater, park them in the tall grass in the vacant lot behind the theater, and find a way to sneak in the back, since there were no armed guards back there. We only did that a couple of times though. I can’t find any pictures of the drive-in.

There is an area of about 100 blocks called the Monte Vista National Historic District, between San Pedro and McCullough a little north of downtown. The district still survives almost intact from San Antonio’s Gilded Age, when newly-prosperous San Antonio residents built the finest neighborhood in the entire state – at least at that time. These houses were built in the late 19th century and in the early 20th.

Here’s a site with pictures and a discussion of a few of the houses:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.texasarchitect.org/shape_images/v08t26p01T.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.texasarchitect.org/shapeoftexas.php%3Fid%3D208&h=164&w=200&sz=6&hl=en&start=51&usg=__BbMcJhLKOD3ad99DizgGXxC3htk=&tbnid=6rZoHc-Zn-rT2M:&tbnh=85&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmonte%2Bvista%2Bsan%2Bantonio%26start %3D40%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Next up: Woodlawn Lake, Fort Sam Houston, Temple Beth El, and the Fairmount Hotel with its resident dog named Luke Tips.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 13

We didn’t go to Woodlawn Lake for activities, because we lived pretty far from it. However, we did drive by and see it every now and then, while our mother told us about how much she had enjoyed it as a young girl in the 1920s. Her family lived seven blocks from the lake when she was growing up, and she told us how they would see movies and other entertainment on a raft out in the middle of the lake. She remembers that when she was about six years old, she would fall asleep before the show finished, and her older sister would carry her all the way back home – the entire seven blocks.

Here’s the skyline of the city as seen from Woodlawn Lake. The three gold domes you see belong to the National Shrine of the Little Flower, which was discussed in an earlier episode:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2306/2144332221_9817ca5e63_b.jpg

And the skyline at night from Woodlawn Lake:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2591154767_d58b679496.jpg?v=0

And a sunrise at Woodlawn Lake:

http://grreed.home.texas.net/FamilyStuff/ERNR/sunrise.jpg

I’m not sure, but I think the next picture below might be the pavilion near the lake. If it is, this pavilion was restored in about 1999 or so. During one of my visits to San Antonio, we stopped by there and mother told us all about the great events that took place there in her day – in the 1920s and ‘30s. She even talked to a man her age who knew the pavilion from back then:

http://tonymharris.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/legacyblog.jpg

The novelist Katherine Ann Porter lived near Woodlawn Lake for just one year when she was a child - back in 1901 – long before our mother was even born. Miss Porter wrote some fantastic fiction – including Ship of Fools. When I was in college I wrote her a letter telling her how much I enjoyed that book. She even answered me – on a rickety old typewriter with all kinds of typos and strikeovers in the letter. I wish I could find the letter now, but it has disappeared.

Fort Sam Houston has played a major role in San Antonio’s history, and the city is quite proud of that. The Army has had a presence here since 1845, but the current site started in 1876. Between 1910 and World War II, Fort Sam was the largest Army installation in the country. Dwight Eisenhower was stationed here upon graduation from West Point in 1915, and he met his wife here. This is the home of the Fifth Army.

Here’s the Quadrangle, the oldest building on the post having been built in 1877. The headquarters building contains an acre and a half of indoor space.

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/mcquien/htmlfils/fsgate.jpg

And a little closer:

http://www.custermen.com/ItalyWW2/ArmyOrg/FtSam5A.jpg

And here’s the famous clock tower standing before the Quadrangle, dating from 1882:

http://www.wheelmeon.org/ftsam6.jpg

Brooke Army Medical Center dates back to 1879, and has become one of the leading resources in the entire world in the treatment of burn victims:

http://www.saushecanes.org/images/BAMC.jpg

Here is the website for Fort Sam Houston:

http://fshtx.army.mil/sites/local/

We were members of Temple Beth El when I was growing up, and most of my memories of the place are quite fond. The congregation has existed since 1870, and the first building was finished in 1876. The current building was completed in 1927, and is somewhat of a city landmark due to its bright red brick dome. Here’s a closeup of the dome:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1087/781261703_97f2806997.jpg?v=0

Here’s the building from a distance, so you can see the whole thing at once, but it’s a small picture:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/26/TempleBethElSanAntonio.jpg/250px-TempleBethElSanAntonio.jpg

And here is the altar where I stood for my Bar Mitzvah – note that in this picture, the only one I can find on the internet, it’s set up for a wedding instead:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/templebethelaltar.jpg

When I first stumbled upon the following picture while searching the internet, my initial impression was to ignore it because of all the intervening wires and other extraneous things. I figured there would be other pictures to show the Temple’s dome – other pictures that didn’t show all these unsightly wires. However, it then struck me that the steep hill looking downward toward the railroad car is Ashby Place. Take a quick look at the photo first, and then I’ll tell you why this was important to me:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2248/2145118572_bd87a2a387_b.jpg

Well, I learned to drive in a standard transmission auto – a 1955 Plymouth Belvedere if you’re interested – and stopping/re-starting on this very hill was a nightmare for me. We had to go up the hill to visit our grandmother, and I don’t think I ever made it through the traffic light at the top of the hill without having to stop at the light. I still shudder when I think about how hard it was for a new driver such as myself to get the car going again when the light turned green, without rolling back and smashing into the car right behind us.

Across the street from Temple is the beautiful Koehler Cultural Center, which was originally a private mansion, built in 1902. Otto Koehler was one of the organizers of what came to be known as the Pearl Brewing Company. Mr. Koehler is said to have selected this spot – many years before the Temple was there – because it had an unobstructed view of his brewery. He thought he could tell how hard his employees were working based on the color of the smoke coming from the smokestack, but this sounds like fiction to me. Here is the house, which now belongs to San Antonio College.

The south façade:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3186/2602396322_730b3340a7.jpg?v=0

A distant view of the southeast corner:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/474182171_7b9ea38ac1.jpg?v=0

A closer view of that same corner:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3180/2602397198_e903285853.jpg?v=0

Another beautiful former home near Temple Beth El is the Woman’s Club of San Antonio on San Pedro a few blocks away. I always admired this house when we were going to Temple, or coming back home from it. The building was once called the Woodward House, having been built as a private residence by David Woodward in 1906. It was a birthday present for his wife. I don’t know if maybe he forgot his wife’s birthday the previous year, or what, but this seems to be a pretty elaborate birthday present.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/428595477_e4b499bcaf.jpg?v=0

The Fairmount Hotel in downtown San Antonio was built in 1906 and was recently renovated. It’s a classical Victorian structure and is located downtown, just a few blocks from the Alamo and the Riverwalk. It has 37 rooms, all of which are decorated differently and in very good taste.

Here’s a photo of the exterior:

http://photos.igougo.com/images/p90127-San_Antonio-The_Fairmount.jpg

And a watercolor by my sister:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/fairmounthotelwatercolor.jpg

In 1985, the entire building was moved five blocks to its present location on South Alamo Street. The move is said to hold the record for the largest structure ever moved on wheels, as there were 3.2 million pounds that had to move without disintegrating. I hope the place does well financially, so it would justify the decision to move and modernize the old classic rather than demolish it and put up a sterile modern structure with the character of a turnip. The hotel re-opened in 1986.

Here’s the hotel’s website if you want more information, including something about its resident dog, whose name is Luke Tips. Apparently, if you miss your dog, you can have Luke sleep with you overnight, and you can get a T-shirt that says “I slept with Luke at the Fairmount.” There’s also a photo gallery in which you can see some of the beautiful rooms and other interior features:

http://www.thefairmounthotel-sanantonio.com/fairmount-hotel-dog.php

Next up: Our Lady of the Lake University, Saint Mary’s University, Olmos Pharmacy, and the Randolph and Lackland Air Force Bases.

[DickZ]

Memories of San Antonio
Part 14

There are lots of colleges in San Antonio – we already discussed Incarnate Word in an earlier episode. Here we’ll go over two of the others - Our Lady of the Lake and Saint Mary’s.

Our Lady of the Lake University was founded in 1895 by a Roman Catholic religious order that was begun in eighteenth century France. College-level classes were originally a two-year curriculum, and the program was expanded to four years in 1919. Our Lady of the Lake was the first San Antonio institution of higher learning to attain regional accreditation. In 1969 it became coeducational, having been limited to women before. In 1975 the school was upgraded from a college to a university. There are about 2,300 students enrolled.

The school has some beautiful buildings, as shown in this distant perspective:

http://www.andrewlicon.com/Images/OLLU_fall2.jpg

And a closeup of the main building, as shown in an old post card:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~usgenweb/tx/bexar/postcards/acadlk.jpg

Our Lady of the Lake had a very tragic fire recently – in May 2008. The fire, which was huge, and televised, was confined to the main building, but many priceless artifacts were destroyed, as well as one of the beautiful spires. The spire will be rebuilt, but it's going to cost a fortune, and of course they can't replace the artifacts.

Saint Mary’s University is the oldest Roman Catholic institution in Texas and the Southwest, having begun operation in 1852. The school has an enrollment of about 4,000 students, and is strong in business, engineering, medicine, and liberal arts.

Here’s an old post card showing an earlier picture of the lovely buildings:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/5/8374171_c148de77d4.jpg?v=0

And a current photo of the main building:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2143/2279765314_29943ba0c7.jpg?v=0

The Olmos Pharmacy on McCullough is renowned for two things at the present - its landmark sign with a clock over the main entrance, and its soda fountain, which is still operating while most of the others have long since been shut down.

The main entrance with the name of the place, and the clock:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1148/1067113645_b8561c57bd.jpg?v=0

And the soda fountain – shown to the right:

http://alanweinkrantz.typepad.com/photos/olmos_park_pharmacy/dsc_2124.jpg

San Antonio has been a mainstay of the Air Force even before that branch of the armed services came into existence on its own - it started out as a branch of the Army. We used to have four major bases. Back in my days, the Air Force personnel would always wear their uniforms in town, so you could readily visualize the large impact on the city’s economy that the Air Force provided. I don’t know if they still wear uniforms when they are on liberty.

We’ll go over Randolph and Lackland, as the other two bases were shut down as an economy measure, and their functions were transferred to Randolph and Lackland.

Randolph Air Force Base has been located right outside San Antonio since 1930, back when the nation’s flying military service was known as the Army Air Corps. It is the home of the Air Education and Training Command. Here is the Headquarters of the 12th Flying Training Wing, a building affectionately known as The Taj Mahal, or simply as The Taj.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Randolph_Air_Force_Base_-_Taj_Mahal_Building.jpg

The base is known as the Showplace of the Air Force because of the Spanish Colonial Revival Style architecture used for all buildings on the base – including hangars. Here’s an example:

http://www.afpc.randolph.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/070904-f-8818b-003.jpg

Lackland Air Force Base provides basic military training for all new recruits. The base has been there since 1941, but it didn’t get its current name until 1948. The new recruits are the guys we always used to see walking around town in uniform. Here they are in a parade on the base:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/45/109332262_4c353028b7.jpg

I’m sure the new recruits now include lots of ladies, too.

Lackland didn’t have a flying mission until Kelly Air Force Base was shut down in 2001 as an economy measure. They now have a two-mile runway that is a joint-use facility between Lackland and San Antonio. Also, Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland is the Air Force’s largest medical facility.

This run-through the sights of San Antonio as I remember them has been limited to those places I recall from personal contact, before I left in 1961. Obviously much in the way of new development has happened in the last 48 years, but I’m confining this piece to what I had first-hand knowledge of. By the time HemisFair was launched in 1968, I had been away for seven years, so it isn’t included here.

The grocery stores I remember best, Handy Andy and Piggly Wiggly, are now gone. H.E.B. seems to have taken their places, growing leaps and bounds from the small H.E.B. that I remember from when I was still there. But at least I do remember H.E.B. There are lots of other grocery stores with new names that I never heard of before.

San Pedro, Broadway, and McCullough still look about the same inside Loop 410 as they did in my day, although many of the buildings are occupied by different businesses now, and a few of the landmarks are gone. I always find it comforting to take a ride up and down these thoroughfares when I visit, just to feel that continuity with the past. I like stopping by the Municipal Auditorium and its neighbor the Telephone Building, and I love visiting downtown.

I have to admit that it is somewhat painful to see an empty Houston Street instead of the bustling one I remember so well, with all those people walking from store to store, as well as to and from the classic movie theaters. I’m sure there are actually more people now, thanks to the revived Riverwalk and much-increased tourist activity, but they are a few blocks away, and Houston Street itself seems almost silent compared to what it was 50 years ago.

I don’t really like seeing the new high-rise buildings that are starting to take over the skyline, but I certainly realize the need for progress. I’m just not sure that putting up sterile-looking boxes devoid of any character represents progress. I mean, if the new buildings don’t come close to matching what the older buildings have always had, is it called progress, or is it called or regression, regardless of what comes inside the new sterile boxes?

The city has grown tremendously - as it should have - over all this time. When I first got my mother’s permission to take the bus to town by myself in 1954, she had to drop me at the corner of San Pedro and Basse Road, because that was as far north as the busses ran at the time. We were a few miles north of that point, and were considered ‘out in the sticks’ for being that far out.

I’m sure it’s necessary for the city to continue growing, and I accept that fact. But I’m thankful that so much of my hometown has stayed the same as it was so long ago, and hopefully it always will. And I am also grateful to those artists who have restored the Majestic and Aztec Theaters, the Municipal Auditorium, the Southern Pacific and Missouri Pacific Depots, the Express-News Building, and the Fairmount Hotel. And of course, thanks also to those who keep all the other old buildings that I treasure in such great shape.

If you’ve come this far in these recollections, which got a lot longer than I originally anticipated, I should say thanks for taking the time to read them.

THE END

[MattG]

Great job!

I really enjoyed reading this as I go to San Antonio at least once per year and am familiar with many of the sights that you comment on herein. Your perspectives bring it all into a new light though and I've learned much from reading your piece. I wish I had it in brochure format for next time!

[DickZ]

....I really enjoyed reading this as I go to San Antonio at least once per year and am familiar with many of the sights that you comment on herein....
Thanks so much, SkullFarmer, for taking the time to comment. Besides Aunt Shecky, it seems that very few people will go to the trouble of doing that. It's much appreciated.

[xtianfriborg13]

That was quite a read! Thanks! I enjoyed it! Beautiful photo, too!