The Alameda

[jrboddie]

I know the Alameda has come up from time to time in the forum and I was wondering if it is possible to separate some of the conjectures from documented facts.

Here is a list of my understanding based on lore and documentation:

+ The Alameda was an avenue of cottonwoods that stretched along what is now Commerce Street between the Alamo acequia and the Acequia Madre.
+ The length was about 320m and the width of the avenue greater than 15m.
+ In 1836 the property that they were on was owned by Jose de la Baum (south) and Luis Hernandez (north) (Rullman map).
+ The name of the Alamo may be derived from its proximity to the Alameda given that Alamo means cottonwood or poplar in Spanish. A contrary explanation (by Nelson) is that in 1803 a Mexican presidential cavalry company was posted there with the name of Company of Alamo de Parras after their town of origin, San Jose y Santiago del Alamo.
+ The significance of the Alameda in the 1836 battle is that the cavalry under the command of Col. Sesma was stationed there to cut down escapees at the conclusion of the battle and that two funeral pyres were made on both sides of the avenue.

What I wonder about is:

+ When were the cottonwoods planted and by whom and why?
+ What is the earliest reference to the Alameda? It is on the 1845 Ancient Wards of San Antonio de Bexar map. Any earlier?
+ How long did the cottonwoods stand?
+ Did they really extend the 320m length? How many were there? I have a drawing with a 1923 copyright by Raba that may be by Lungkwitz that depicts the Alameda in 1853 showing only 8 trees surviving on the south side and fewer on the north. I estimate that as many as 20 on each side would fill the length of avenue between the acequias given the spacing in this drawing.

Can anyone add to or correct this list?

[Rich Curilla]

Jim, check out what has been presented in the Alameda thread, including model captures from Edward's and my virtual models. The distance from bridge to bridge was about 1,000 feet. Basically we believe that the trees lined both sides of the extra wide street all the way. Placing them on my model at their distances from tree to tree as perceived from the Lungkwitz painting, I get 31 on each side of the street. Edward's conjecture is that they were a bit further apart, but that they went beyond the Acequia Madre de Valero. Brad Ponder has also been digging and agrees with this. You can see in the other thread Edward's clear description why. Deed records by Francois Giraud used the trees for reference points way east of the acequia. Here's the link to where it all starts:

alamostudies.proboards.com/thread/1431/site-alameda-1911-2012?page=2

Lungkwitz shows a total of 12 trees, but we have to assume that many to most of them were gone by the time of his painting. I would lay odds that many were cut down by Cos and Santa Anna, first for fortification lumber and then for funeral pyre fuel. Many surely died as well.

[jrboddie]

Is this image the one you attribute to Lungkwitz? My confusion was the copyright at the bottom. Raba was a San Antonio photographer. He must have photographed some of Lungkwitz's works. I found it in this collection.



And here is a derivative work from the March 1911 San Antonio Express.



I wonder if there is a better primary source that describes the Alameda. Also, the cottonwood is a native Texas tree. Was the road carved out of a natural grove or were the trees planted as the historical maps/models seem to indicate? The newspaper image is low res but seems to indicate the cottonwoods extending to the south.

Does the stone house correspond to one of the structures on the earliest Sanborn map of the street?

I wish the San Antonio Express scan was more legible. I checked the source on Ancestry and it is only slightly better than the image posted on the other thread.



Here are a couple of interesting paragraphs that I could partially decipher:

For many years the Alameda was at the eastern extremity of San Antonio. It extended from where St Joseph's Church is now located now to about a block beyond Water Street, or at least the double row of cottonwood trees did. All east of there for... In fact, as far as the … was …of
… The Alameda was about (almost?) the width of the present Alamo Plaza and least twice as long. It was traversed by three irrigation ditches … of which furnished moisture for the cottonwoods and other trees … it. …also grew there in profusion. It was a beauty? Spot of the town for many years and was the favorite … or … of the populace, where … or … bands played while the … the people promenaded. As is the custom today in Mexico, the women and girls walked in one direction, while the men and … paraded on the opposite side … passing each other instead of promenading together.

Many deadly duels were fought in the Alameda between

and

There was an orchard very near the place where the bodies were burned on the south side of the Alameda and it is stated that … and sparks blowing in the… destroying some of the fruit trees…of which died soon after.


(Gary Zaboly shows the orchard in his overview drawing in Huffine's Blood of Noble Men. Nelson does not.)

I just noticed that the Alameda (with cottonwood trees) is shown on the Labistida map drawn for Santa Anna's use. Perhaps this is the earliest representation on a map.

[Rich Curilla]

Jim, The Ernst Raba photograph is what is copyrighted. You are correct. The Hermann Lungkwitz painting is owned by the San Antonio Public Library and, I assume, on exhibit there. His earlier sketch for it (probably done on site) is in a private collection (Martha Benn) and is Pencil and opaque white on paper. It is similar in all details except it lacks a person walking a dog. This was the Alameda in 1856.

It was laid out in the first decade of the nineteenth century by (if I'm remembering correctly)the Alamo de Parras company. They laid out "The Road to the Powder House" as a specific military route connecting their military community (Pueblo del Alamo) to the magazine and watch tower they built. It was not the road to Gonzales until much later. If you notice from my model captures below taken from Sanborn -- and the earliest Bexar maps, particularly the "Confederate Map" which was actually drawn in 1846 and added to later -- it is a perfectly straight road. Nothing else in Bexar is like that.

The section between the acequias was indeed wider that then rest of the road, and seems to have been that wide (perhaps 80 feet, as on the Sanborn) for a short distance east of the Acequia Madre de Valero, about to where the Gonzales road turns off to the southeast. I have little doubt that the whole stretch from the western to eastern acequia was lined with cottonwood trees on both sides. Deed records also prove that at least two cottonwoods did exist along the same line going further east than the Acequia Madre. These trees were planted as landscaping -- Texas' first. They were not a preexisting grove. In my opinion, the reason for doing all this was emulation of the Capital city, which had (has) a park called El Alameda. San Antonio de Bexar's was small compared to the prototype.

In my illustration, looking from San Fernando tower, you can see the arrow straightness of Potrero Street and its continuation as Alameda Street all the way to the Powder House atop Powder House Hill. Compare this to Calle Calabozo (now Market St.) to its right, which was laid out by the Canary Islanders, I believe.


Likewise, in this street view from the western end of the Alameda looking east -- straight as an arrow with planned landscaping.


View from the Alamo. My guess is that many of these trees were already in trouble by 1836, however there is no question that they were there. They are (as you discovered) on LaBastida's "March 1836" plat, drawn as two rows of trees, and referred to in Santa Anna's March 5th. orders to the army when he says, "The cavalry under the orders of General Juaquin Ramirez y Sesma shall occupy the Alameda and saddle up at 3:00 A.M." General Filisola, in his History of the War in Texas as translated by Wallace Woolsey, says (viewing from the Alamo), "Going from East to West within rifle Range of the enclosure described there was a small poplar grove, and at a similar distance there were several mud huts and small houses with gardens at the back which formed a sort of street from North to South." This suggests that much of Pueblo del Alamo that I have shown in my model was already leveled for field-of-fire, but, according to Travis, this was not so.

[Rich Curilla]

Apr 18, 2014 8:31:45 GMT -5 jrboddie said:

Does the stone house correspond to one of the structures on the earliest Sanborn map of the street?

Here is the Sanborn 1885 map with the only possibility highlighted in red.


But if you compare it to this 1868 Raba photo taken from the roof of the Menger (I have indicated the framelines on the above map), the Sanborn is showing the buildings you see in the photo -- all 1840's and later vintage architecture.


I believe Mark Lemon is correct in surmising that the house in question was the first house of Jose de la Baum, who owned all the property south of the Alameda within the land bordered by the acequias. Don't know if any deed records exist to bear this out.

A comic highlight from this particular detail of the Sanborn map is the street along the Alamo acequia. Apparently, when the cartographers were labeling the map, somebody asked, "What's the name of the street by St. Joseph's Church along the Acequia?" to which somebody in the office answered, "Damned if I know." And questioner promptly labeled it as such.

[jrboddie]

Rich, to me, it appears that your photo shows a smaller stone structure set back from the road at the left of the view. This could correspond to the structure on the Sanborn map that is intersected by the left most (eastern) sight line. I like this as the house in the Lungkwitz drawing because it also appears to be set back from the line of trees.

[Rich Curilla]

Nope. Clearly not. That is much much too far east. Lungkwitz' depth perspective is quite normal in his painting. The Powder House and hill appear to be the correct distance away. Thus there is no telephoto lens type effect to compress foreground to background imagery. Thus the house in the painting can't be that far away from the acequia. The first doubt I had about my own conjecture about the Sanborn structure that I highlighted (a year or so ago) was that even that site was too far east. I would suggest that, by 1868, the German influence had rebuilt everything in that area. The De la Baum house would have been long-gone.

[jrboddie]

Yes, you are probably right.

[Rich Curilla]

Apr 18, 2014 17:06:06 GMT -5 jrboddie said:

Yes, you are probably right.

[jrboddie]

Regarding Lungkwitz and perspective, help me interpret this painting. The building on the far right is said to be the back of the Alamo church. So I make the street to be an elevated view of Crockett and Bonham. However, I am stumped by the topography. Look how elevated the road is. It looks to be almost a story above the ground around the Alamo. There appears to be a narrow bridge, but it seems out of place to be over the river and surely we are not looking at Commerce St here or are we?

[Rich Curilla]

Oh my, Jim. You must have been sniffing your running socks again. The street has never looked elevated to me and I've had this painting and/or lithograph in my face since the early 1970's. I love it.

O.K., I'll get serious. Lungkwitz was on a tower that used to be in the courtyard of the one-story building that preceded the Crockett Hotel. He is looking west on Crockett Street as you guessed. The river is two blocks beyond where you think you are seeing a bridge, which I take to be the palisade fence he mysteriously placed where Crockett St. should open into Alamo Plaza. I am guessing that he took artistic license in order to extend the compositional line made by Crockett in order to lead the viewer's eye to San Fernando Church, because there never at any time was a feature like that which would have blocked half of Alamo Plaza. The far end of that last gable-roofed building on the left just before that fence should be the end of the street where the Menger's N.W. corner is now.

Here is a print of the actual painting (what you were looking at is the lithograph done in Dresden from the painting which is owned by the San Antonio Library. Maybe it will make more sense. The litho was done by somebody in Dresden who had never been to San Antonio.


And a detail from the 1873 Augustus Koch baloon view of San Antonio showing the tower in the top left corner, and its relationship to the Alamo below it, Crockett Street, Alamo Plaza, the river and the Commerce Street bridge in the top-right corner. We are looking from the N.W. Maybe this will help lock it in.

[jrboddie]

Rich, the painting does indeed clear the picture for me. In the lithograph, I was seeing an optical illusion with the roof of the house in the center of the picture making it appear as part of a bridge with the rest of the house below it. Now after seeing the painting, it is hard to see the illusion. Thanks.

[Rich Curilla]

Apr 21, 2014 12:04:14 GMT -5 jrboddie said:

Rich, the painting does indeed clear the picture for me. In the lithograph, I was seeing an optical illusion with the roof of the house in the center of the picture making it appear as part of a bridge with the rest of the house below it. Now after seeing the painting, it is hard to see the illusion. Thanks.

And my problem, of course, is that, having seen this picture (the litho) for so long and knowing the reality, I can't even see the optical illusion now that you've explained it.

The other contributing factor, I believe, is that the image of the litho you posted is even a very poor reproduction of the original litho, which is what I have on my wall. While not much better in this thumbnail, here is the complete Dresden lithograph below:

Attachments:

[jrboddie]

This is the illusion that threw me.

[Rich Curilla]

OMG! You've ruined me! Now I'll never see it any other way!!! LOL. Ha! If you look at it with this alien element in place, it truly does make the Alamo garden look lower. (Note to self: Don't ever go camping with this feller.)

P.S. -- You must be fun with an ink-blot perception test.