Think A Minute
“Tradition is not worshiping the ashes but preserving the fire.” Mahler
I never mastered German (Ich versuche immer noch) but I always liked the German word for landmark Denkmal because it sounded like a contraction of “Think a minute” or “Think once” and I thought that is what a good landmark did, it made you think about some element of the past and wonder why it was here in the present.
If you want more German words for landmarks, check out my “Monuments, Memorials and Erasure” blog from 2017, written during the last bout of iconoclasm. Here we are again. In response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, hundreds of thousands of people on six continents have protested in the streets against systemic racism, police brutality and the legacy of disenfranchisement.
These protests have defaced or destroyed memorials perceived as celebrating racist hegemony. Indeed, many of them did. Confederate monuments erected a generation or more after the end of the Confederacy were an attempt to solidify Jim Crow. In Bristol, England, they chucked the statue of a slaver into the ocean, and in Richmond at least four Confederate statues have been pulled down by protestors, many after the Governor’s decision to remove the massive 1895 statue of Robert E. Lee, although that is held up in court right now.
Lee never wanted statues or memorial to what became known as “The Lost Cause” and was dead a quarter-century before his image went up in Richmond.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation came out with a stronger statement than it did during the 2017 iconoclasm, while still leaving the door open to local communities who decide to contextualize their monuments rather than remove them. In any case, they were clear that any symbol or statue designed to stigmatize or terrorize any segment of the population should go. Duh.
That doesn’t stop those uncomfortable with the iconoclasm from driveling out the “you can’t erase history” pablum, as if history texts would somehow vanish with the statues. Besides, in almost every case the statue is to be preserved in a history museum, not valorizing public space.
Iconoclasm exists across human societies. Buddhist icons scratched out in Angkor for Hindu ones, Jain and Hindu temples smashed to create mosques in the Deccan, and of course the anti-idolatry of Mao’s Red Guards. Heck, even the Orthodox Christians who do icons better than anyone have had periods of iconoclasm in their history.
My friend Joseph McGill of the Slave Dwelling Project, who has dedicated his life to Black Lives past and present, tends to support keeping monuments and contextualizing them. He worries about the “slippery slope” between tearing down some to tearing down all statues.
The momentum right now has gone from Confederate to Union and plenty of other statues as well, from Francis Scott Key to Teddy Roosevelt to U.S. Grant, Cervantes, Christopher Columbus and even Mount Rushmore. In fact, even the great Augustus St. Gaudens memorial to the 54th Massachusetts (Black Union Soldiers) got tagged in Boston Common because when people are rioting, ALL statues are The Man.
Christopher Columbus just went down here in San Antonio. Only a couple years older than me, the statue was put up in the late 1950s, and it reminds me of the various statues in public parks in Chicago. These were often placed by various ethnic associations to mark their neighborhood space through the media of national heroes.
Chicago’s Humboldt Park had, in addition to Baron von Humboldt and Fritz Reiner for the Germans, Leif Ericson for the Norwegians and a Miner holding his daughter for the working class in general. The park previously had Thaddeus Koszciusko, but the Poles moved him out to Solidarity Drive on the lakefront in 1980, because by then the neighborhood was Puerto Rican. The Puerto Ricans in turn tried to erect a statue of Pedro Albizu Campos but the park rejected it because Albizu Campos had advocated violence against the government (less successfully than the Confederacy) He ended up across the street on private land.
We don’t write history with statues, but we do write power relationships with them. The examples in Humboldt Park show how immigrant groups asserted their presence and power. Robert E. Lee in Richmond demonstrated how those in power intimidated a portion of the population.
Preservation is a process that treats each site based on its individual significance. This is why Joe McGill calls for contextualization and this is why the National Trust leaves the final decision to the individual place. We have a recently installed statue of Theodore Roosevelt in San Antonio but they are removing one in New York because it is a very different statue that is clearly problematic. There are statues of people we actually might want to valorize (like Lincoln) that produce a cringe because of the racist way they were composed a century or more ago.
Everyone keeps asking me for a simple answer. Are they going to tear down all the statues of Washington and Jefferson because they were enslavers? No, but that is the wrong question. That is a reductio ad absurdum betraying a fear of understanding our history in a new way.
The questions are simply: Who is this in public space? Why and when was it put here? What does it mean to this community today?
And perhaps you might also ask: How comfortable are we with this as a Denkmal, Mahnmal, Ehrenmal or Gedenkstätte?
UPDATE July 8, 2020
Lonnie Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian, said it best:
“What is crucially important about this is that removing statues is not about erasing history. Removing statues in many ways is about finding a more accurate history, a history that is more in keeping with the best scholarship we have out there. So for me, it is about making sure we don’t forget what those statues symbolize. It’s about pruning them, removing some, contextualizing others and recognizing that there is nothing wrong with a country recognizing that its identity is evolving over time.”
JULY 24 update: Chicago just removed two Columbus statues on the same day!
AME Church foundation – a discovery and an opportunity
The ongoing San Pedro Creek Cultural Park project has already added a lot to San Antonio, with marvelous public artworks, a pleasant walking path, and lovely plantings, all in the name of flood control.
Last week I participated in a panel discussing a very exciting archaeological discovery – the foundations of an 1875 African Methodist Episcopal Church just across from the Alameda Theater.
The design team had know of the site of the church and planned to interpret it, but they did not expect to find the full 40 by 60 foot foundation of the building, and the original 1875 cornerstone. According to newspapers, a “time capsule” celebrating the event was put into the cornerstone!
I participated in the focus group organized by the San Antonio River Authority because the original design for this section created a semicircular amphitheatre stepping down 6 feet from Camaron Street to the creek. This would eliminate all but the front fourth of the foundation, hence the need for the focus group. We are pushing for more.
In a time when people are marching to redress the injustices done to African-Americans then and now, it is more pressing that we save and interpret this significant historic cultural site in San Antonio. As Everett Fly has said, San Antonio does not have a strong record of preserving African-American history. This remains true in our ongoing efforts to save the Woolworth Building.
The AME Church site is a shining opportunity to conserve and commemorate a vital but underrepresented aspect of San Antonio’s cultural inheritance.
Spanish Governor’s Palace, San Antonio: preserving an interpretation
I am helping the City of San Antonio with a virtual tour of the Spanish Governor’s Palace, which is both the only remaining residential structure of the 18th century city and a fascinating document of how historic preservation was practiced 90 years ago.
When you look at this building, you may think of the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that was a big inspiration. The Santa Fe building was restored right about the time that Adina de Zavala started lobbying for the preservation of this San Antonio building in 1915. By 1930 the city had purchased and restored it and the Conservation Society was operating it.
The building is a rare and singular survivor, but it was never really a palace, and while one Spanish Governor did visit San Antonio in 1720, the building dates to 1722 as the comandancia, or home and office of the military commander of the presidio garrison.
Restored by architect Harvey Smith, he took numerous liberties we would not countenance 90 years later. Despite finding no evidence, he built a fountain and a walled back garden that even he knew never existed because it would convey a romantic sense of refined 18th century life.
This romantic vision of “The Spanish Governor’s Palace” cause Smith to add two rooms that never existed, and interpret other rooms with these elaborate plaques that described a courtly life that also didn’t exist. Each interpretive plaque is then explained by a contemporary plaque below explaining Smith’s romantic embellishments!
Old telephone poles became ceiling beams and old flagstone sidewalks became floors in the restored “Palace” and the whole was filled with period furnishings. The century that the building spent as a tinsmith shop, pawn shop, hide dealer, clothing store and saloon was not interpreted.
This was an era of nostalgic appropriation of historical styles, from the Spanish Colonial to the Georgian, Tudor and Renaissance Revival. This was the time when architect R.H.H. Hugman proposed “The Shops of Aragon and Romula” that would become the San Antonio River Walk.
It was a different aesthetic and a different goal for preservation. Smith did lots of research, but there was precious little to go on for an 18th century building that had been changed a hundred times. No international guidelines for preservation existed yet (they would come in 1932.)
A similar approach was taken by O’Neil Ford when he restored La Villita in 1939-41. There was so little documentary or forensic evidence about the vernacular buildings he was restoring that he simply tried to create “a mood.” Like Smith, he added lots of walls to enhance that mood.
I suppose the goal was to really demonstrate the importance of the historic building by giving it a more glamorous pedigree. There was one reference to a fandango or party in the salon of the Governor’s Palace, so like the 1930s Riverwalk tile mural by Ethel Wilson Harris, a singular incident became a chronic intepretation.
What is really fascinating about the Governor’s Palace – and other sites “restored” in the 1930s is that those acts of poetic license are now themselves historic, and they have added another layer of history.
To me history – basically the same word as “story” – is made richer by more layers of interpretation, by more stories. The primary story you get from the Spanish Governor’s Palace is a sense of 18th century life on the Spanish frontier. But you also learn about the civic life of the 1920s that sought to bolster civic pride with romantic tales of civic origin.
This is the “Child’s Bedroom” that Smith invented out of whole cloth in 1930. His impulse was to illustrate the luxury and gentility of the “Governor’s” lives with some creative construction. Like Adina de Zavala or the Conservation Society at the time, they wanted to glorify their forbears.
My favorite room is the Commander’s Office, not only because it reveals the original rubble stone construction, but because it also reveals the true nature of the building. The Commander used this space to command, but much more to sell household goods and necessities to his soldiers and the general public. Business was so brisk that he added a storeroom behind in the late 18th century, although if you go there today you see religious artifacts and other antiques in vitrine displays.
In the 21st century we understand heritage conservation as more than an architectural design problem, and are careful to find evidence for both the stories we tell and the physical fabric we restore – or choose not to. If somehow this last residential building of the Spanish city had survived until today, it might look very different. It would tell the stories of the presidio commanders with a little less embellishment, focusing perhaps on how the 19th century shops and saloons were a continuation of the comandancia rather than a rejection of it. It would perhaps be called the Presidio Captain’s Residence and it would be without its 1930 additions.
I like telling both stories – the true story of the presidio and its capitans, along with the equally true story of 1920s San Antonians puffing their chests and inflating their history just a bit.
Virus. Media.
Media. Not Medea, although Media can also enthrall countless screaming Argonauts. And while we like to think NOW is always so very different from THEN, it rarely is. The voyage of the Argo was captured in an early, oral form of media. In 1898 a newspaper started an international war. David Crockett and James Bowie were media stars in the era of illustrated weeklies, making their last stand at the Alamo all the more newsworthy. Napoleon was a master of memes, and gaslighting existed in Ancient Rome long before gas lights.
We are now well into the era of “fake news” but in some sense all news is fake the same way all maps are fake because they are not full size. They are representations of reality. Things have to be edited out to fit the media. Facts must be mediated to be conveyed – that’s why it is called media. And once the internet came along, things need not be reported or written or even edited – they could simply go viral.
Viral. Should have seen that one coming.
I wrote about media two and a half years ago in this post, inspired by the prescience of Marshall McLuhan, who famously said the medium is the message. Filibustering Fauntleroys are flummoxed by the profusion of fake facts but forget that foundational facts are no match for the media that must carry them to their host.
Another irony – thanks to a REAL virus we are all sitting at home fully reliant on our several media to communicate and commiserate. Think about that next time you wonder why people can be so stupid. We created the infrastructure to spread stupidity at synapse speed.
I remember when the Daily Show came out in 1996 – it was the first comic news media reaction to the age of the internet and it played with both TV news and internet formats. I can remember bits in the first three years before Jon Stewart where they would report on some organization making its opinion known on the internet or national news media and then reveal that the organization was no more than some guy living in his Mom’s basement. We laughed at him then but he is still in the basement and now he gets taken seriously.
We are practicing social distancing and protecting others from our nanodroplets but we are still sharing media-borne diseases from self-proclaimed religious wackjobs, Russian bots, and flailing incompetents.
Practice media distancing. If it isn’t a verifiable source, don’t click, comment or share.
We were in the checkout line at the grocery store and my Millennial daughter saw a tabloid with a headline to the effect of “Harry and Meghan become King and Queen” and she asked if it was real. Those of us of a certain age know that the headlines in the grocery checkout line are NOT REAL. They are the analog version of clickbait. The original fake news.
There are layers of irony here. We live in a world of viral media and somehow we got caught with our pants down by a real, biological virus. Many of us working from home still have our pants down. The world won’t be the same again, but you can help it be sane.
Integrating History: The Role of Alamo Plaza in Bexar County’s Civil Rights Legacy
Our World Monument Watch Day Event took place this past Saturday at the double-height courtroom of the Bexar County Courthouse, and it was stupendous. We had five excellent speakers who offered new insights into the role of Alamo Plaza and specifically the Woolworth Building in the story of Civil Rights in Bexar County.
You can see a full video of the event here. It began with a welcome from Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and Conservation Society President Patti Zaiontz. Then, 16-year old Taylor Andrews, grandniece of Mary Lilian Andrews, read the letter that Mary wrote – at age 17 – in March, 1960 asking the downtown lunch counters to integrate.
Her letter, as Youth President of the NAACP San Antonio branch, led to a mass meeting on March 13, 1960. The meeting of 1500 persons agreed that a sit-in demonstration should begin on March 17. Business and religious leaders gathered on Tuesday and convinced seven downtown lunch counters to peacefully and voluntarily integrate on Wednesday, March 16, 1960, a first for the South. Jackie Robinson was in town Friday and said – in a Page 1 New York Times article – that it was “a story that should be told around the world.”
I gave a background of the issue – how the Conservation Society got the building listed on the state’s Most Endangered List in 2016, shortly after the state purchased it. Then the 2017 Alamo master plan and the 2018 Alamo interpretive plan. It was that 2018 plan that illustrated the Woolworth replaced with a new building. They have always wanted to reclaim the “footprint” of the original mission and battlefield, even though there are no archaeological remains (the buildings have basements)
The Conservation Society has consistently argued FOR a new Alamo museum WITHIN the Woolworth and Crockett Building facades. We even released a plan this May illustrating exactly that.
In May Woolworth’s was designated a State Antiquities Landmark and in October it was listed on the World Monuments Watch List 2020, one of 25 sites in the world. You can read all about that here. Thanks to that designation, we have hosted a series of events, including the symposium, held on February 1, the 60th anniversary of the very first sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Our first speaker was Everett Fly, who traced a series of Civil Rights events on Alamo Plaza, beginning back in the 1880s when an African-American group successfully sued the Mayor for denying their right to assemble there. Everett passionately defended the character of the Alamo city, where diverse groups were more likely than other places to mingle, and Alamo Plaza was the premier place they did so.
Next was Dr. Tara Dudley of University of Texas – Austin, an expert on the National Register. African-Americans are nearly 13% of Texas’ population but are represented in less than 5% of our National Register properties. Indeed, the Woolworth Building National Register listing from 40 years ago is only about its excellent architecture and the Civil Rights story was not told until it was listed as a State Antiquities Landmark in 2019.
Dr. Bruce Winders, who was Alamo historian and curator for 23 years until last July, voiced his support for keeping the buildings on Alamo Plaza and not destroying them to recreate a space that became a city more than a century and a half ago. You don’t tear down a real historic building to reveal the site of a long-lost wall.
Dr. Todd Moye of the University of North Texas shared some videos from his Civil Rights in Black and Brown project, which has collected more than 500 oral histories from veterans of the Civil Rights movement in Texas. He described in vivid and unpleasant detail what the sit-in activists faced in other cities, further underscoring the unique response of San Antonio.
Finally, Dr. Kathryn O’Rourke gave a rousing presentation on how plazas have defined the power relationships in a society from the Renaissance forward. She passionately related how Alamo Plaza is a civic space made richer by its layered history and legacy of freedom of expression over the last century and a half. She received a standing ovation.
Everyone agreed that the Symposium was a roaring success, with five excellent speakers and nearly 100 engaged participants. It proved that the story of Woolworth’s and the other lunch counters resonates with people and can be a force for preservation.
Many thanks to sponsors Bexar County Commissioner’s Court, World Monuments Fund, H-E-B and the San Antonio Public Library. You can view the full symposium here.
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Upcoming Events: World Monuments Watch Day!
Join us for these upcoming events celebrating the inclusion of the San Antonio Woolworth Building on the 2020 World Monuments Watch List!
🍩Friday January 17, 2020 🍩
10:30 to Noon – Talk, tour and donuts outside the Woolworth Building, 518 E. Houston Street. Gather next door at Moses Rose’s, 516 E. Houston Street to hear first-person recollections of the early Civil Rights era, the Woolworth’s lunch counter, and its famous potato donuts! Everett Fly will offer a tour of the civil rights sites in Alamo Plaza. We will distribute flyers regarding our official World Monuments Watch Day event January 31-February 1 and pass out free donuts!
🚶♂️Monday, January 20, 2020🚶♂️
10:00 AM – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. March. Join the Coalition for the Woolworth Building as we participate in the nation’s largest Martin Luther King march. Information about the campaign to Save the Woolworth!, an important African-American landmark, will be available in the park following the march.
👀Friday, January 31, 2020👀
3:00 PM – Press Conference featuring World Monuments Fund President Benedicte de Montlaur regarding the San Antonio Woolworth Building’s inclusion on the World Monuments Fund 2020 Watch List for the “underrepresented narrative” of Civil Rights history on Alamo Plaza.
🏛️Saturday, February 1, 2020 🏛️
10:00 AM to 3:00 PM – Symposium: “Integrating History: The Role of Alamo Plaza in Bexar County’s Civil Rights Legacy.” Bexar County Courthouse, double-height courtroom. Scholars of African-American history, architecture and preservation discuss the important legacy of civil rights in the Woolworth Building and throughout Alamo Plaza.
VOLUNTEER: RSVP to conserve@saconservation.org or call 210-224-6163
Woolworth Building, Alamo Plaza: End of 2019
2019 was a big year for the San Antonio Woolworth Building. In May, the Conservation Society and the Coalition for the Woolworth Building released a study showing how the historic Crockett and Woolworth Buildings could be incorporated into the new Alamo Museum.
Also in May, the Woolworth Building was named a State Antiquities Landmark. Then in October, the Conservation Society and the Coalition for the Woolworth Building constructed an ofrenda in honor of Mary Lilian Andrews, the 17-year old NAACP youth branch leader who initiated the sit-in movement’s first peaceful and voluntary lunch counter integration in the south on Wednesday, March 16, 1960.
Also in October, the San Antonio Woolworth Building was named to the 2020 World Monuments Fund Watch List, one of only 3 sites in the U.S. This led to a rash of publicity in favor of saving the building. So the question is – where are we today?
If you want to know the plan for the Woolworth Building, just look at my blog from August, 2018. It’s all there.
It’s 2019. You don’t change your plans just because the public doesn’t like them. The lack of public influence on the plan was one of the reasons that historian Bruce Winders left the Alamo in 2019 after 23 years.
In an effort to regain the PR momentum, the Alamo announced that it had studied the lunch counter integration and would fund a 5,000 square foot institute on Civil Rights history at the Kress Building, two blocks to the west on Houston Street. The institute – led by Dr. Carey Latimore of Trinity University – is a good thing.
But why can’t they interpret that history at the Alamo Museum? The museum is supposed to be 130,000 square feet. They can’t spare 5,000?
Follow The Money
Besides dealing with the Woolworth publicity, the Alamo is getting sued by Native American groups concerned about burials as well as Defender descendants concerned about the Cenotaph. To regain PR momentum, they announced that the Cenotaph restoration and relocation would begin in early 2020. The interesting fact about this announcement is that it is achieved not through the long-promised $300 million in private donations, but with $38 million in previously secured city bond money.
The new Alamo Museum design is not yet revealed, and you usually need that – plus half the money during the “silent phase” – in order to generate your centimillionaire donations. Here we are five years and well over $100 million of taxpayer money into the project and it is still being directed by private donors who haven’t chipped in yet.
Civil Rights History
Dr. Latimore was hired to prepare a study on the social history of the Alamo Plaza and nearby buildings for the Alamo. He has argued that the Kress was the first lunch counter integrated, not the Woolworth. Hence the institute there.
The whole point of the negotiated, voluntary, peaceful integration in San Antonio was that no one had to go first. And, as Dr, Gregory Hudspeth, President of the San Antonio branch of the NAACP said to Dr. Latimore – Woolworth’s was the most important site to San Antonians. It was where you grabbed a donut as you changed buses to the south, east or west sides of the city. It was where the sit-in movement started in Greensboro, N.C. As I noted four months ago, Woolworth’s was lamented when it closed – Kress was not.
The Express-News sent out photographers and reporters to Woolworth’s lunch counter on March 16, 1960. The photographer’s log clearly states F.W. Woolworth and says 12 photo negatives were used. The photo of the young man looking into the window (reproduced in the mural) is clearly Woolworth’s, but the interior shots look like Kress. It would not be normal procedure for the photographer to visit another location without making a correction, but we do know that the San Antonio Light called out Kress. The conclusion would be that photographers and reporters went to Woolworth’s, found no photo ops, and continued to Kress where they found black and white customers. You can see the photos here. Another photo appeared in the Greensboro, N.C. paper on the 17th.
The event was covered by the local papers on March 16 and 17, followed by positive editorials celebrating how San Antonio was setting an example of peace in an era of conflict. “San Antonio can set the example for the whole nation” said the San Antonio News on March 17, 1960. The day before it quoted Fr. Erwin Juraschek, one of the religious leaders who negotiated the agreement stating “This city can make a fine name for itself throughout the country and the world.” and of course there is Jackie Robinson’s quote in The New York Times on March 20: “This is a story that should be told around the world.”
Thanks to the World Monuments Fund, that story is finally being told around the world.
Mary Andrews Ofrenda
This weekend there is an ofrenda honoring the life of Mary Lilian Andrews, the 17-year old Our Lady of the Lake student and youth NAACP President who spurred the integration of lunch counters in San Antonio. Just a month after the first sit-in at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC, she wrote to seven downtown lunch counters urging integration.
A mass meeting was held a week later and demonstrations planned for Thursday, March 17. City, business and religious leaders got together on Tuesday and the lunch counters were integrated Wednesday without incident. Two days later Jackie Robinson spoke at La Villita and compared San Antonio’s achievement to his integration of Major League Baseball.
In a Page 1 New York Times article on March 20, 1960, Robinson said what San Antonio did was a “story that should be told around the world.” For her part, Mary Andrews was photographed getting a Coke at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the March 31, 1960 issue of Jet magazine.
Mary Andrews sadly passed away 20 years ago but the Coalition for the Woolworth Building worked with her family to develop the ofrenda, aided by artist Chris King and spearheaded by Beth Standifird of the Conservation Society of San Antonio. Even her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority contributed.
The top of the ofrenda is designed to mimic the cornice of the famed 1921 Woolworth Building, which became a State Antiquities Landmark in May.
Papel picado banners down the side spell out “Civil Rights”.
The front of the ofrenda is designed like the Woolworth lunch counter, complete with salt and pepper shakers, Woolworth’s menu and representations of the legendary Woolworth’s donuts. The “Woolworth’s” legend on the sidewalk at the entrance (still visible on Houston Street) forms a floor in front of the altar.
Mary’s other passions, from piano to Ford Mustangs, are also represented, along with a multitude of flowers and lights.
Placemats with calaveras quote the letter Mary wrote to the lunch counters nearly 60 years ago.
Members of the Coalition and the local branch of the NAACP will be on hand today to answer questions about Mary. We are located right on Alamo Street south of Nueva right at the entrance to the Muertos Fest.
Please come visit during the free festival this weekend and vote for our ofrenda!
For more about the Woolworth Building effort, see The Conservation Society website here!
SUNDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Our ofrenda won second place!
YEAR LATER UPDATE: It’s Mary’s birthday and we memorialized her on our webpage here.
Support for the Woolworth Building
Late last year, the Conservation Society joined together with several other organizations to form the Coalition for the Woolworth Building, the 1921 structure at Alamo and Houston Streets that was the first Woolworth’s lunch counter to integrate peacefully and voluntarily during the sit-in movement of 1960. I wrote about the Coalition earlier this year HERE.
Last year the City turned the whole project over to the State of Texas, owner of the Woolworth, Palace and Crockett buildings since 2015. For four years we have advocated a plan that would incorporate the buildings into the new Alamo museum. Recently that plan was endorsed by the Society of Architectural Historians.
We decided to envision what the 1921 Woolworth Building and its neighbor the 1882 Crockett Building would look like as part of the new museum. We hired an architect. We called it the compromise plan because we gave up on a bunch of issues we fought for last summer, like fencing the plaza, closing the streets, moving the Cenotaph and even preserving the 1926 Palace Building.
The plan envisions a reveal of the location of the west wall of the Alamo compound INSIDE the existing buildings. Elimination of the Palace Building simplifies the problem of misaligned floorplates, and a large addition behind and above the Crockett and Woolworth provides the 130,000 square feet the Alamo desires.
Most importantly, the plan maintains the integrity of century-old buildings and allows the interpretation of the Mission period, the 1836 battle, and the 1960 Civil Rights movement. This makes the site appeal to more tourists.
Recently the Coalition for the Woolworth Building, which includes our San Antonio branch of the NAACP, West Side Preservation Alliance, San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum, SAGE, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and others, noted that it will also be a draw for Civil Rights tourism, a rare growth area in the museum industry. (See my blog on this topic a couple months ago HERE.)
Plus, it retains authentic historic fabric rather than removing it for a location of a wall that is entirely gone. The buildings have basements.
Sadly, and despite the multiple concessions we made to our earlier position (and 7,000+ petitions!) the Alamo dissed our plan. They said – as I predicted 364 days ago HERE – that the lunch counter story could be told at one of the other lunch counters that also integrated on March 16, 1960.
When Jet magazine decided to honor Mary Lilian Andrews, the 17-year old Our Lady of the Lake college student who wrote the letters asking the downtown lunch counters to integrate, they photographed her in Woolworth’s.
Woolworth’s was the symbol of the Sit-In movement. Yesterday (September 30 UPDATE) on CBS TV news Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch chose his four favorite artifacts from the Smithsonian’s 19 museums: that is from 11 million historical items. One of the four was the Woolworth lunch counter from Greensboro.
When the Woolworth’s in San Antonio closed in 1997, its loss was widely lamented. Not so for Neisner’s, H.L. Green’s, Grant’s, Kress, or Sommers. When you think of the sit-in movement, you think of Woolworth’s, where it began. San Antonians remember the big glazed donuts at Woolworth’s because it was the intersection of two main streets and multiple bus lines.
It was the place and it remains the best place to interpret the sit-in movement’s unique exegesis in San Antonio. It is also a fine place to interpret the long history of the Alamo. This is the message the Coalition is sending to Land Commissioner George P. Bush, Governor Abbott, and the Alamo Trust. Learn more on the Conservation Society website!
Big Week for the Woolworth Building
A week ago the Texas Historical Commission voted unanimously to designate the Woolworth Building in San Antonio as a State Antiquities Landmark. While no landmark designation can absolutely prevent demolition, this status is significant. More importantly, unlike the earlier designations (National Register and City) this nomination included a detailed discussion of the civil rights history of the site.
The big week began on Tuesday, when the San Antonio Conservation Society, joined by the Coalition for the Woolworth Building, released a compromise plan that would wall off Alamo Plaza and expose the location of the mission’s west wall – while preserving the Crockett and Woolworth Buildings. The event got good coverage in print and television and even radio!
One of the ironies of the decades-old attempt to reveal the site of the western wall is that the northern wall – beneath the Post Office and Gibbs Building – was more significant in the 1836 battle. This is where Santa Anna broke through and this is where commanding officer Lt. Col. Travis fell.
No remains of the western wall survive – not only were the walls destroyed after the 1836 battle, but the Crockett Block buildings have full basements, which eliminates any remnant of 17th century foundations (unless the Franciscans were sinking 14-foot deep footings).
Our plan preserves the Crockett and Woolworth Buildings while adding a large 4-story addition to the rear to achieve the stated goal of a 130,000 square foot museum. We also carve an arcade through the buildings to reveal where the wall was. This provides a “teaser” for the exhibits inside, which can include in the Woolworth site both the Castañeda and Treviño houses along the wall, as well as the Woolworth lunch counter site.
Unlike the Conservation Society’s earlier position, the fences and walls enclosing the plaza are illustrated in this plan. Moreover, the Palace theater facade is removed to allow for a grand entrance to the new museum. This displeases some preservationists.
The Alamo management (the buildings have been owned by the Texas General Land Office since 2015) dismissed our effort to share a vision that includes BOTH a new museum and enclosed plaza AND preserved landmarks. As I said to a reporter following the press conference – you can walk along the line of the wall and when you reach the Woolworth interior, you can turn right and learn about the battle, then turn left and learn about the lunch counter integration.
You can have both! See my earlier blogs on this subject here and here and here.
We have been advocating for the Woolworth Building since 2015 and it was a rewarding week thanks to the efforts of the Coalition for the Woolworth Building, who participated in both the press conference and the trip to Austin for State Antiquities Landmark designation!