San Fernando church question

[valerobowie]

from the most accurate map known drawn in 1845 of San Antonio de Bexar from "the Alamo an illustrated history

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[valerobowie]

this is the floor plan for my new San Fernando church model i finished just last night,but there is still much more work to be done,thanks-Valerobowie

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[Rich Curilla]

Sept 25, 2010 6:03:54 GMT -5 valerobowie said:

this is the floor plan for my new San Fernando church model i finished just last night,but there is still much more work to be done,thanks-Valerobowie

Dustin, HABS considered, I still hold that your floorplan is more accurate with how it would have been built.

[valerobowie]

thanks a lot Mr. Rich,it just seems right to me considering how the mission churches were built.do you know how many sides the bell tower had by any chance,its really hard for me to tell,thanks a lot

[Rich Curilla]

Sept 26, 2010 2:28:09 GMT -5 valerobowie said:

do you know how many sides the bell tower had by any chance,its really hard for me to tell,thanks a lot

San Fernando's bell tower had eight sides.

[valerobowie]

now we know that the early San Fernando church was a parish church with only one bell tower,would there have been a room within the bell tower like a baptistery or a confessional like in the missions,or would it have been just a staircase leading up to the bell tower.is there anymore archaeological dig reports that have not been posted yet perhaps-thanks valerobowie

[Rich Curilla]

It was a room just like at the Alamo. This was important for stability of the tower as much as for the usages of the church. I think Jake's comments mention something about it, but I don't have time to check right now.

[valerobowie]

so that means that it would have had to have a staircase somewhere on the outside for the choir loft and then stairs above that room leading to the bell tower,at it is with all the missions,so maybe it would have been about the same design as mission San Jose but only one bell tower and the crucifix shape,ill go with that and redo my floor plan a little bit to see if it works,thanks a lot Mr. Rich

[valerobowie]

ok here again is the refinished floor plan,with all things considered,let me know what you think,all comments are welcome,pass this on to everybody so that i may get everyone's opinion before continuing the model,thanks so much-Valerobowie

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[jrboddie]

I think your plan is missing a buttress on the south transept as shown in this photo.

[Jake]

Dustin, you're really getting into the innards of this thing now.

Go back and look at the plan of the excavatioin Bruce posted on the first page of this thread. You'll see that we excavated along the wall surface for the west and south walls, so we can say that there was no doorway through them to a staircase, and we've all seen the pictures of the east side, the front, so we know there's no doorway and external staircase there. That means access to the choir loft and the upper levels of the bell tower were either in the church or within the ground-level room of the bell-tower. Since the ground-level room in the tower was probably the baptistry, a staircase would probably not have been in there -- certainly we saw no trace of a stone staircase in the part of this room that we opened up, so I figure that means there wasn't one anywhere in there.

This implies that the access to the bell tower was through the choir loft, and since there's no indication of an outside straight staircase up either the north or south side of the building (it would have shown up on the plans and pictures, and interfered with the buttresses), and no indication of an exterior spiral staircase like at San Jose, I figure that people got to the choir loft by a wooden or stone stairway in the nave of the church under the choir loft. From there you would go through a second-floor (first floor for you Brits and other assorted Europeans) doorway from the choir loft into the bell tower second level -- this room would have been called the antecoro, or "after the choir loft." There you would find ladder-like stairs up to the higher levels, that would give you access to the church roof and on up to the bells. Yes, there should be a small doorway from the bell tower out onto the roof, probably on the north side of the tower. All this is the way both Concepcion and San Jose still do it today, except that Concepcion had an exterior straight staircase up the side of the convento and then the side of the belltower, and San Jose has a spiral stairway.

Does your model show anything of the interior of the building, or only the outside?

[valerobowie]

ya i know about the buttress,just have not included it yet.so you don't think that San Fernando could have had a spiral staircase enclosure like on mission San Jose,to me it just does not make any sense to have a stair case within the nave for the choir loft,seams like it would be in the way and would not look very good ya know,just a thought.once my model is out of the planning stages,it will have a full interior as well as exterior,so i want to get everything right first then i will start building it,so far i have everything figured out,except the elusive choir loft staircase,thanks alot-Valerobowie

[valerobowie]

ok here's the latest floor plan,i gave it a wooden choir loft and interior staircase similar to that of presidio la Bahia and espiritu santo. i have also included my drawings of the front and interior front so all comments are welcome-Valerobowie

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[valerobowie]

San Fernando front

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[valerobowie]

interior front,both are not quite finished yet,this is just what i got so far,all comments are greatly welcome,thanks -Valerobowie

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