SAN ANTONIO – Long after the showdown at the Alamo, a building across the street, which was recently bought by the Texas General Land Office, is setting up for another battle of historic proportions.
The San Antonio Conservation Society says that efforts to revamp Alamo Plaza have put the Woolworth Building on the Preservation Texas list of 2016 Most Endangered Places.
It is joined on the list by the U.S. Courthouse on East Cesar Chavez Street, which will soon be replaced by another building due to disrepair.
Standing in the way of both projects is a rich history that preservationists want to protect. Bruce MacDougal with the Conservation Society is vocal about why the buildings’ histories are significant to the city.
The old Woolworth Building shut down its retail business in the 1990s, but before that, its lunch counter was the backdrop to a crucial moment in the fight for civil rights.
"At this very Woolworth's, it was the first counter to peaceably integrate, and that was in 1960. It led the way for other states and other cities to integrate their lunch counters," MacDougal said.
He said the decades-old story is now lost amid the tourist traps that envelop the building. The building's future is cloudy now that the Texas Land Office has purchased it and the buildings on either side in its effort to renovate and enhance Alamo Plaza. MacDougal worries it will be razed and thereby San Antonio’s peaceful civil rights moment will be lost forever.
The federal courthouse also has a questionable future, as well as a significant history. It was designed by a local architect as an example of cutting edge 1960s architecture for the 1968 World’s Fair. The fact that it is still standing is important to those who would protect that legacy.
"All of Hemisfair has been recognized as eligible for the National Register of Historic places as a Historic District. What we have here in San Antonio is the most intact World's Fair site in the United States," MacDougal said.
He takes offense that the courthouse building is being characterized as uninhabitable now. The Conservation Society thinks it can be repaired, remodeled and repurposed without being removed.
For more information on the SA Conservation Society, click here.