World Heritage Center – 10 years of World Heritage in Texas.
In 2015, the San Antonio Missions were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, becoming the only World Heritage site in Texas and making San Antonio one of three U.S. World Heritage cities. I celebrated this event in my blog at the time – not knowing I would move to San Antonio a year later. I had made a point of touring the missions carefully in 2010, and I am pleased that my blog from that visit remains accurate. I still tour them – took three visitors out last week. Never boring. This is a landscape with deep cultural resonance.
Mission Espada at night.
Last week, the City of San Antonio’s World Heritage Center opened near Mission San Jose, and over 500 people turned out to celebrate. The Mayor said the turnout was twice what they had for the new airport terminal! San Antonians LOVE to celebrate culture. A lot of those in attendance were Mission descendants whose families have been here for many, many generations.
The effort to achieve World Heritage status began in 2006 at a Conservation Society Board Meeting when it was suggested by former President Virginia Nicholas. Soon the Society had engaged the services of author/historian Dr. Paul Ringenbach, who wrote and rewrote (and rewrote) the World Heritage nomination. Experts were brought in and we coordinated with World Heritage USA (then called US/ICOMOS).
The inscription took nine years from start to finish, but that is actually pretty quick in World Heritage time. The Frank Lloyd Wright sites also began to work on World Heritage inscription in 2006, but did not achieve it until 2019 – four years after San Antonio. I did not move to San Antonio until 2016, but having spent years working on World Heritage sites worldwide, and having toured the missions in detail, I was excited and impressed. Which is why I blogged about it. I’m still impressed.
The new World Heritage Center has a screened veranda by Adriana Garcia that takes its motifs from the flowers, waterfowl and nopales of the San Antonio River. The interior features specially commissioned works of art and provides many layers of people-based interpretation. Many Conservation Society leaders are included in the first exhibit area, which focuses on the voices that helped make this special place happen. A large video details not simply the significance of the mission in world history, but the experiences of those who have lived here for generations and generations. Indeed, a “gift box” exhibit focuses exclusively on the voices of the mission descendants.
Unlike many World Heritage sites, the San Antonio Missions are not archaeological ruins. Not only are all five mission churches still extant, but four of them are active Catholic parishes! While the mission walls have vanished at the Alamo and Mission Concepcion, they survive in part at the other three missions, having been rebuilt at Mission San Jose 95 years ago. The landscape is still there, with two of the mission acequias still operating as working irrigation systems.
Labores at Mission San Juan, last week. Irrigated by an acequia built in the 1740s.
Most importantly, the people are still there. And they are at the center of the exhibits in the new World Heritage Center. At the opening, many wore badges identifying them as mission descendants, and throughout the exhibits there are opportunities to hear and see their stories. In the missions the indigenous Pajalache and others joined with the Spanish Franciscans to create a confluence of cultures that is legible to this day.
Even the preservation history of the San Antonio Missions goes back a century! The first item that the Conservation Society purchased in order to save it was the embossed wooden door to the Mission San Jose Granary, which you can see on display at the Mission today. We saved it 99 years ago, in 1926.
From a preservation point of view, the Missions are a lesson in persistence. The ladies of the Conservation Society managed to purchase and restore the Mission San Jose Granary (above) in the early 1930s. This led to the reconstruction of the entire Mission San Jose complex and to the Archdiocese deciding to restore the church, which had been without a roof for a century.
The Conservation Society persisted. In 1941 the four southern missions became a State Historical Park thanks to our efforts. In 1978 the Conservation Society lobbied tirelessly behind the scenes to get the missions listed as a National Historical Park. In 2006 we led the World Heritage effort. That is persistence.
Besides persistence, the other word I keep coming back to when I think about the missions is partnerships. How do you get entities as diverse as the National Park Service, Archdiocese of San Antonio, City of San Antonio, Bexar County, State of Texas and at least four not-for-profits (Conservation Society, Mission Heritage Partners, Los Misiones and the Alamo Trust) to work together to create a singular World Heritage Site? Partnerships. And practice. San Antonio has been practicing these partnerships for most of a century and the Conservation Society has been at the center of it the whole time. You can see the annual reports of this multi-level partnership here.
Matachines celebrating the Virgen at Mission Concepcion, 2017.
94 Years and Going Strong!
On March 22, 2018 the San Antonio Conservation Society turned 94! That’s right, we have been around a quarter century longer than the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Rena Maverick Green and Emily Edwards founded the group with 11 other women in 1924. They supposedly notched their first “save” that year, a tree along the river the city planned to remove. Within a decade they had purchased and saved much of Mission San Jose, especially the Granary.
Hard to believe, but the Missions were in bad shape 94 years ago – the tower here at San Jose would collapse in 1928 and was only restored thanks to the intervention of the San Antonio Conservation Society. The upper third of the Mission San Jose Granary was bought and paid for by the Society in 1930, thank you very much.
We originally formed to save not just architectural treasures like the Missions but also areas of natural beauty and most importantly customs – what we now call intangible heritage. That is one of the things I love about working here – we knew what 21st century heritage conservation was like way back in the early 20th century. We revived Los Pastores and our amazing Night In Old San Antonio ® event is now in its 70th year. It is a cultural performance and homage. Also a fundraiser. Biggest in the United States. By miles and miles.
It is the Missions that really course through the history of the San Antonio Conservation Society. That was the first place that the women of the Society went out on a limb, buying land, securing craftspersons, and actually owning and restoring historic buildings.
And then giving them away. By 1941, the Society had not only restored much of Mission San Jose, it had secured National Historic Landmark status (a 5-year old program at the time) and coordinated the efforts of the State, County, City and Catholic Archdiocese to create a state park encompassing the San Antonio Missions. All before Pearl Harbor.
Mission San Juan Capistrano.
By 1978 through delicate lobbying from the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago (coincidentally the birthplace of the “smoke-filled room”), they made the Missions a National Park, maneuvering the deal past the opposition of President Carter. Money. Smarts. Savvy.
At Mission San Francisco de Espada.
When I visited San Antonio in 2010, I made a point of seeing all of the Missions, even the Espada Aqueduct that the San Antonio Conservation Society bought in the 1950s to insure its preservation.
I blogged about the Missions during my 2010 visit (SEE BLOG HERE).
Espada Aqueduct.
See, the amazing thing about the Missions is not their architecture – although much of that is quite excellent. Nor is it simply the fact that these were the first European structures built here. It is the fact that the entire landscape of an encounter – between the Spanish and the Native Americans – is not simply legible in the landscape: It is alive.
Matachines at Mission Concepcion, 2017.
I blogged again 5 years later when the San Antonio Conservation Society, together with city and county partners, achieved something amazing in only 9 years: Inscription as a World Heritage Site (SEE BLOG HERE). For the same reason. Here was a place that contained history not only in buildings, and waterways, but in people and traditions. Customs.
10th and 11th generation Canary Islanders at San Fernando Cathedral two weeks ago.
It is fun to look at my old blogs – when I had literally no idea I would be working here – and see how much respect and admiration I had for the Society, one of the oldest in the nation. When I applied for the job in early 2016, I was equally impressed by how the Society kept with the times, embracing modern landmarks less than 50 years old…
To be fair, it will turn 50 in two weeks…(Confluence Theater/U.S. Pavilion HemisFair ’68 – now Wood Courthouse)
And sites that represent the diversity of the American experience, a diversity that the historic preservation movement overlooked in its early days.
1921 Woolworth Building on Alamo Plaza, site of first successful (and peaceful) integration of a lunch counter in the South in February, 1960.
I suppose being founded in 1924 gave the San Antonio Conservation Society a certain modernity. This was a time of a booming, building downtown, and indeed the first effort was to save the Market House from street widening, which failed.
Widening of Commerce Street in 1913 – the Alamo National Bank Building of 1902 (center) was moved back 16 feet rather than shave off its facade like the others. Then three stories were added.
If you are in downtown San Antonio, the odds are a building the Conservation Society bought and saved is within a block of wherever you are standing. Here are a few from our 94 years, none of which we still own…..
Ursuline College/Southwest School of Art
Aztec Theater
Rand Building – the tech center of downtown SA
O Henry House
Casa Navarro, home of Jose Antonio Navarro, only Tejano signer of both Texas Declaration of Independence and Texas Constitution. We ran it for 15 years before turning it over to the state.
Emily Morgan Hotel. A block from the Alamo.
Maverick Building. Also a block from the Alamo.
Reuter Building. Half a block from the Alamo.
Staacke and Stevens Buildings
We aren’t the oldest preservation organization in the country – heck, we aren’t even the first one in San Antonio, where efforts to save the Alamo began back in 1883. But we are 94. And going strong!