Tag: San Antonio

Picturing the City’s Past Just Got Easier

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sacs-libraryTucked away on the top floor of the Anton Wulff House, the headquarters of the San Antonio Conservation Society, is a library. This library is stuffed with all things San Antonio – 3,900 books, historic maps, oral histories, 13,000 photographs – tracing the city’s past.

Although the library is only open 24 hours a week, this valuable resource has thrown open its doors to researchers everywhere. Not only is the collection catalog online so researchers know what is available, but 475 of the library’s historical photographs have been scanned in for viewing. These are photos difficult to share even in person because they require white-glove treatment for preservation purposes.

The society’s entire Raba Collection has been digitalized. Taken or reproduced by Bohemian-born photographer Ernst W. Raba (1874-1951), these images document the physical attributes of the city, and some of its citizens, between the 1850s and 1930s. Additional rare images now available online focus on events, from everyday scenes to historic ones.

birdsellers

According to Librarian Beth Standiford in the Conservation Society’s newsletter, The Preservation Advocate, this first step toward making the library’s collection more accessible was made possible with Capital Club funds. These gifts are provided by “friends” and include recent large donations from H-E-B; GLI Distributing, Inc.; Valero Energy Foundation; Jabby Lowe; Ann Griffith Ash; Kathleen and Curtis Gunn, Jr.; The Steve and Marty Hixon Family Foundation; Karen and Tim Hixon; The Joan and Herb Kelleher Charitable Foundation; Patsy Pittman Light; and JoAnn Boone and Rio San Antonio Cruises.

The Capital Club allowed the society to hire intern Elizabeth Pople to scan these initial photographs, add them to the online catalog and improve descriptions of them. As additional funds are available, the library will enter these into the template for uploading to the University of North Texas’ Portal to Texas History to broaden access. Future plans also include using Virtual Exhibit software to create online photo exhibits and to begin digitizing the 1982 San Antonio Downtown Historic Resources Survey.

Part of the purpose of the San Antonio Conservation Society is:

…to keep the history of Texas legible and intact to educate the public, especially the youth of today and tomorrow with knowledge of our inherited regional values.

This project certainly fits the bill by making a giant leap in the number of people who can be made aware of the rich heritage of the city. Awareness of San Antonio’s historical assets leads to appreciation of them. If they are appreciated, they are preserved without question – no need to resort to expensive legal battles or to throw oneself in front of bulldozers Wanda-Ford-style.

As someone who spends much time digging through historical graveyards of all kinds, my hat’s off in gratitude to contributors to the Capital Club at all levels. Good friends can be hard to find, but here’s hoping the society finds additional generous ones to further these efforts.

 

Adding a Contemporary Backdrop to a Municipal Landmark

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A flood control project eliminating some of the bends of the San Antonio River as it snaked through downtown created a new plot of land enabling the City of San Antonio to cobble together the real estate needed for the Municipal Auditorium, with a distinctive Spanish Colonial Revival profile designed by architects Atlee B. Ayres, Emmett Jackson and George Willis. The $1.2-million Municipal Auditorium opened, lit “from pillar to post” according to the San Antonio Express, on April 19, 1926, with the Texas Pioneers’ Ball:

The result is an auditorium which Mayor Tobin declares without reservation is the finest in the country. Every sort of modern, practicable device has been installed to make the building the last word in structures of its kind….

Since its doors opened, the Municipal Auditorium hosted a huge variety of events – high school graduations, political rallies, boxing matches, concerts, Elvis, Fiesta coronations and even “midget women’s” wrestling – meaning many San Antonians have strong sentimental attachments to it. Which translated to emotional opposition when architects returned with recommendations that demolition of almost all but the distinctive façade would be required to create a facility appropriate for theatrical and musical productions of today. Layered atop the normal historical concerns was sensitivity over its prominent River Walk location.

But the stunning, contemporary solutions presented by the architectural team of LMN of Seattle and Marmon Mok of San Antonio won over many and secured approval.

Was fortunate enough to take a tour guided by Steve Souter and Morgan Williams of Marmon Mok this past week, and the transformation is amazing. Wood paneling the color of a Stradivarius violin is combined with cutting-edge programmable lighting around the upper decks of seating.

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When the Municipal Auditorium opened in 1926, the Express bragged about its seating; although it doesn’t sound as though fire codes on the number of people who could be stuffed into a room were quite as rigid as today:

The capacity of the auditorium is 6,000 persons who can be seated in the comfortable opera chairs. In event of an extra large attraction, more than 3,000 persons could be seated in extra chairs in the auditorium and on the stage. The stage alone can accommodate 500 people seated in chairs of 1,000 standing. The opera chairs in the auditorium alone represent an investment of $60,000. They are all extra large chairs, 20 inches across the seat. There are 18 oversize chairs for extra large persons. Such big people can find chairs that will accommodate them comfortably if they ask especially for them.

Seating on the ground floor in what will be the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts easily will top that, although not numerically. The main theatre will accommodate 1,750. The wooden ground floor in the photos represents a $12-million investment. But it’s a rather magical floor. Each segment contains seating on its flip side and can be individually rotated and/or elevated to allow for a multitude of configurations. Found a handy-dandy video of this online (Don’t be misled by the video heading; the operation of the Tobin seating will closely resemble that of this theatre in British Columbia.).

For a more intellectual analysis of the Tobin Center’s assets, turn to Mike Greenberg.

The first year’s bookings for the Tobin are as diverse as the Municipal Auditorium entertained and can be found here. The doors will swing open for the first events in September.

(Thanks for providing some of the interior shots, Janet and Allison.)

 

 

Postcard from Lisboa, Portugal: Sardines and the Saint

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Somehow the sardine has been elevated to a level almost of the saint himself, Saint Anthony that is.

Outside of Portugal, he might be known as Saint Anthony of Padua. But, here in Lisboa, he is their hometown boy. He was born right here. A saint of heroic proportions, so much so that his Feast Day, June 13, is glorified by a full month of celebrations.

People have been prepping for the party ever since our arrival in Lisboa. Festoons are flung across streets. Banners hang and bleachers are set up along the broad, tree-lined Avenida da Liberdade, ready for a parade on June 12. Neighborhood groups gather and parade across town to his church on various evenings. And, in Alfama, booths come alive nightly, plying passersby with jiggers of the strong cherry ginjinha, jugs of sangria, beer, fried things and, of course, grilled sardines.

Sardines seem synonymous with the celebration, with artist-designed sardines featured on the banners of the umbrella group, Festas de Lisboa. This might stem from one of the numerous miracles attributed to Saint Anthony. Perhaps tiring of preaching to skeptics, he turned to the water and starting praising the glory of the fish who all rose enraptured to the surface, listening until he completed his sermon.

Surely, the attentive ones must have been sardines because it makes everything so convenient. Because this is their prime season. Along the coast, colorful fishing trawlers head out at night with nets to encircle the schools of sardines to bring back fresh to the docks by morning. By noon, they sizzle on grills everywhere throughout the country, the smoke and smell scenting the air heavily on some streets.

These freshly caught ones seem unrelated to the strong-tasting, oily canned sardines I remember from childhood. The fine bones of small ones thrown on the grill can be easily chomped upon, but the plump larger ones that you must filet are prized for their moist, sweet meat.

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Being here on June 13th is sort of a pilgrimage, because, although named in his honor, San Antonio, Texas, pretty much ignores his day. Even his mission, the Alamo, no longer is known by his name. Frank Jennings tried to get a meaningful Founders’ Day going, and Rolando Briseno attempted to create artistic pageantry in honor of San Antonio’s patron saint.

But nothing stuck.

Yet….