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Post by Jim Boylston on Dec 24, 2007 14:25:25 GMT -5
I agree, Mark, that that particular area needs excavation and study. I wondered how much of the surface, even in that area, had been removed when the flagstones and other pavements were placed over the years. Perhpase you're right, and they didn't dig to any appreciable depth when renovating. Jim
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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 24, 2007 17:48:40 GMT -5
I'm no archaeology expert or grave digger, but I agree with you fellers. Dig, dig, dig and rescue the alamo relics before the actions of nature desolves them into nothingness. Times-a-wastin.
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Post by Jake on Jan 2, 2008 13:49:45 GMT -5
Finally I'm where I can reply to Covner's assault.
This is going to be difficult, people, because I'm going to quote sources at you -- but I'll include translations, so fear not.
Antonio Tello arrives in San Antonio ca. 1740. He has been hired to build churches for all four missions, and is apparently also hired to build the parish church in San Antonio, as well.
Most of his work from 1740 to 1744 is on the church at Concepcion.
The first stone of the new church was laid May 8, 1744, according to Habig, who says that this note is in the baptismal record.
Tello leaves town during the night of August 23, 1744.
1745: "Mientras se acaba la Yglesia empezada, qe es de Cal, y Canto -- sirve de Yglesia una pieza suffic[ien]te capaz, con su coro, y Sacristia ... [description of altars and contents] ... Para la torre ay quatro campanas medianas ..." While the church that is begun is being finished, that is of lime and cut stone, serving as the church is a room of sufficient space, with its choir, and sacristy ... for the tower there are four middle-sized bells.
1749: first two burials in the church under construction, November 16, 1749. The second burial was in the south transept of the church under construction.
The church collapsed soon after this, in the early 1750s. In 1750, a new master mason and fine-carver were hired, and brought to San Antonio.
1756: "La Yglesia nueba, que se estaba fabricando, se derribo toda su fabrica por haver salido poco segura; y se estan dando las providencias para su restablecim[ie]nto con toda brebedad. Entre tanto sirve la antigua, que es una pieza bastante capaz con su chorito, y Sacristia.... En el Choro [description of altar in choir loft]...." the new church, which was being built, collapsed completely because of poor construction; and provisions are quickly being made for its reconstruction. Meanwhile, the old one serves [as the church], which is a room of sufficient size with its little choir loft and sacristy ... In the choir loft .... Later, in the description of the convento: "En la escalera ai tambien su puerta p[ar]a el Choro," in the stair there is also a door to the choir loft.
Aagh -- I have to go to an appointment. I'll pick back up with the 1759 description when I get back to a computer.
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crc
Full Member
Posts: 30
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Post by crc on Jan 2, 2008 15:45:23 GMT -5
Jivey,
Sorry to slip this one in while you're reloading; and let me say I'm way out of my depth here, but you translated "restablecim[ie]nto" as "reconstruction" and the (admittedly primitive) online translation services translate it as "restoration," "reinstatement," "recovery," or "re-establishment." I know archaic Spanish is different than today's, but is your translation choice based on context or an assumption?
I think you know where I'm going with this question...
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 0:47:12 GMT -5
Craig: No, you're right, the phrase says something like "they are making provisions for its reestablishment with total brevity," or some such combination. I didn't mean to imply that it meant "rebuilding on the original foundation," or any similar interpretation. I'm roughing out the English as I get them written down.
1759: "En el interin se concluie la obra de la Yglesia, que se esta fabricando de Cal y canto, y bobedas, mui capaz, y con no poco primor de el arte Travajada -- la que se hallara en la mediania de su altura. Sirve de Yglesia la misma pieza, que consta, en las antecedentes Visitas, en ella se alla.... [description of altars and contents, similar to 1745 and 1756] ... en la Sacristia ... [description of contents out the wazoo] ... In the interim the work on the church is concluded, that is made of lime and cut stone, and vaults, very spacious, and worked with no small excellence of art – the which is in the middle of its height. Serving as the church is the same room that appeared in the previous visitas, in which is .... [This is clearly a confusing statement, since it begins by saying the church is finished, and then says it is only to half its height, and that the earlier building is still in use as the church (I suspect an idiom hiding in the phrase, and that it means something like “during the period of its being concluded”).]
1762: "La Yglecia de esta mision, aunque se acabo perfectamente con su torre, y sacristia, vino a tierra, por la mala inteligencia del artifice, y se esta fabricando otra de armoniosa arquitectura con piedra de canteria, la que aqui se halla a medias con la solidez, y perfeccion que se requiere, para su hermosura, y sostener las vovedas. Sirve de Yglecia una pieza de 35 varas de longitud [96 feet], que se fabrico con el destino de troxe, en que se halla un altar ... En otro altar ... Otro altar se halla en el coro, ..." The church of this mission, although completed perfectly with its tower and sacristy, fell to the ground because of the poor inteligence of its construction, and another is being built of harmonious architecture with cut stone, the which now is found at half [at the half-way point] with the solidity and perfection that is required for its beauty and to support the vaults. Serving as the church, a room of 35 varas length, that was built for the purpose of a granary, in which is found an altar ... On another altar ... Another altar is found in the choir loft ...
Well, my wife announced that it's time for me to go to bed, and I agree, so I'll pick up here in the morning with the 1772 statements and later stuff, and then I'll turn to sorting back through all this.
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 11:49:06 GMT -5
There's some uncertainty in my mind that the first burials in the church were in 1749 -- could have been 1745. I have to check the microfilm of the burial books to be sure.
1772: Description of the church under construction. The granary is listed, but nothing is said about its size. The new sacristy in the new permanent church is in use as the temporary church.
1786: Brief description of granary in use -- no details. Description of church under construction. The sacristy of the new church is in use as the temporary church.
1793: Description of the church under construction. "Unida a la casa del Padre una p[ie]za, con 30 v[ara]s de largo, 5 de ancho, y 7 de alto, con el suelo de adobe pero su techo solo tiene las bigas buenas ..." Attached to the house of the Father a room with 30 varas of length [82.2 feet], 5 of width [13.7 feet], and 7 of height [19.2 feet], with a floor of adobe, but its roof only has good vigas. That is, the building has had most of its roofing removed, with only the vigas left in place, and next to the building is a large stock of boards, beams, and roof drains to be used for repairing the roof. The inventory does not name this building as a granary, but it contains the standard measuring scoops and the like that a granary usually has.
And that's it for reports on the conditions of the buildings of Valero.
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Post by TRK on Jan 3, 2008 12:45:28 GMT -5
1759: "En el interin se concluie la obra de la Yglesia, que se esta fabricando de Cal y canto, y bobedas, mui capaz, y con no poco primor de el arte Travajada -- la que se hallara en la mediania de su altura." . . . [This is clearly a confusing statement, since it begins by saying the church is finished, and then says it is only to half its height, and that the earlier building is still in use as the church (I suspect an idiom hiding in the phrase, and that it means something like “during the period of its being concluded”).] I don't think it's idiomatic, but it sure seems contradictory: since grammatically the "la que se hallara" part has to refer back to "la obra de la Yglesia" (or just obra, or Yglesia), I read it, contracted and deleting the aside about the pretty workmanship, as "In the interim the work of the church is finished, . . . which is at the mean (or midpoint) of its height." Medianía has a lot of meanings, principally mediocre, but also connotes mean (i.e., measurement). There's also a naval usage that means midship. Without much to base the speculation on, I wonder if the writer of the inventory meant that work on the church was concluded up to the half-way point (with no clear schedule on when work is to resume)?
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 13:04:31 GMT -5
Tom: "I wonder if the writer of the inventory meant that work on the church was concluded up to the half-way point (with no clear schedule on when work is to resume)?"
Wow -- I like that interpretation, and it matches what I have kept feeling was the intent of the first part of the statement. Thank goodness someone here is comfortable with Spanish -- I'm still a read-only, and grammar is a mystery to me, even in English.
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Post by TRK on Jan 3, 2008 13:15:36 GMT -5
I'm mostly read-only too, Jake, but do know how to order a drink and cuss in Spanish. I guess I'll have to do until we can get a real Spanish expert to join.
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 13:44:10 GMT -5
Summarizing what the reports say:
Temporary church: 1745: The temporary church is a spacious room with a choir loft and sacristy. 1756: The “old church” is serving as the church, and is a room of sufficient size with a little choir loft and a sacristy. In the convento there is a stairway that communicates with the choir loft. 1759: The same room as described in the previous visits continues to serve as the temporary church. 1762: A room is serving as the church that was built to be the granary, and is 35 varas (96 feet) long. It has a choir loft. 1786: Sacristy of the new church becomes the temporary church. 1793: Granary described as 30 v. (82.2 feet) long, 5 v. (13.7 feet) wide, and 7 v. (19.2 feet) high.
Permanent church: 1744: May 8, construction begins on first permanent church – laying of first stone. 1744: August 21, work stops – 3.5 months of work. 1745: The first permanent church is under construction, being built of lime and cut stone. Apparently work continues in the absence of a master mason. 1749 [or 1745]: The church is dedicated for burial – description indicates church has transepts. 1749 [or 1745] - 1756: The first permanent church collapses. 1756: The first permanent church, “being built,” not completed, has collapsed, and the reestablishment of the church is being planned. 1759: Second permanent church is at half its final height.
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 13:45:48 GMT -5
Craig: The granary is said to be 19 feet high as of 1793, so a choir loft in the building would be at about 9 feet above the floor. The 1793 inventory says the main convento rooms are 4 varas high, or 11 feet. The 1762 report states specifically that the temporary church was in the building built to be the granary, and that it had a choir loft. The previous reports all indicate that the same building was in use as the temporary church, with its choir loft. As far as I can see, the reports leave no doubt that the granary building was in use as the temporary church from before 1745 until the temporary church was moved to the new sacristy between 1762 and 1772.
As to the stairway – Come on, Craig, you know you can’t say “there was only one set of stairs in the convento [implied: throughout the history of the convento] ... in the southeast part of the convento.” Sure, Labastida and Everett put a staircase here, but you notice that Everett only shows a staircase here in 1848. In 1846, he shows the convento with the center section of the back porch fallen in, and no stairs. So by graphic evidence we would have to assume that the Everett stairs were replacements for the Labastida stairs, that had fallen between 1836 and 1846, not the same stairs. How many stairs were on the building through the previous century is not knowable, although we do have the 1756 statement that there was a set of stairs somewhere on the building.
The point is, the stairs shown by Labastida could have been built at any time. There’s no way to state as fact that this was the only set of stairs ever in the convento, or that there were never stairs at the north end of the convento building, south end of the granary. That, by the way, is the implication of all this, that the choir loft in the granary was in the south end of the building, and the main entrance into the granary/temp. church, always under the choir loft, was therefore through a doorway on its west side at its south end.
Your whole argument depends on the 1756 statement about the staircase that communicates with the choir loft. The report mentions only one choir loft, and that’s the one in the granary/temporary church, so when it says in the discussion of the convento that there’s a staircase that communicates to the choir loft, that’s the only choir loft available to be referred to. Assuming the first permanent church ever got finished enough to have a choir loft (something that isn’t a certainty considering the changing story the statements about it made later tell us) that choir loft was gone in 1756, and I think it unlikely that the staircase description would be referring to that now-vanished choir loft instead of the still-existent one in the granary.
The business about “second story choir loft in a one story building” clearly doesn’t enter in to this, since the choir loft would have been only two feet lower than the second floor of the convento. Note that the description of the staircase says the doorway is in the stairway, not on the second floor, which implies a landing (which would fit with the additional statement that there was a painting hanging on the wall in the stairway, as well – this sounds like the landing decoration in the stairway of the convento at San José, which had a little santo there), or just a doorway in the stairway wall a few steps down from the top.
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 14:13:54 GMT -5
Finally, the question of the “wall” itself, and why the church was set back from the plaza and convento, that I’m not allowed to get away with. Since Craig insists, I’ll walk you through it, but let me warn you it’s not easy.
It took me a while, looking at the mission churches we have in San Antonio, to work out what seems to have been going on with Tello (other than hanky-panky during off hours)(or even work hours, who knows?).
Tello was hired to design and build four mission churches, at the four Queretaran missions of San Antonio (San José was run by the friars of the college of Zacatecas), and apparently was hired to build the parish church as well. It appears that he designed what amounts to the same church for all four missions – the two we have, at Valero and Concepción, are virtually identical in plan. The other two, at Espada and San Juan, didn’t get above-ground, although the 1772 inventory says that the foundations of the permanent church at Espada were “half-built.” There are indications at both missions of significant foundations in the ground, and probably excavated foundation trenches where the foundations themselves were not completed. Archaeology would be able to trace these structures and tell us more about Tello’s approach.
Working with the construction at these other missions, some things become apparent. First and foremost, Tello had a sort of over-complex approach to church/convento design and the relationship between the two. Concepción is the best example: what you see there is not what he was dealing with. The convento there was to the south, around the area where the visitor’s center is now (they built it there over my screams of outrage, but at least they did some archaeology first). The vaulted and arcaded structure running south from the church is Tello’s design, half finished by him along with the church. So, you see, he built the church away from the standing convento, and connected it to the standing convento with a new, vaulted and arcaded leg of convento building. You see where I’m going with this?
He didn’t do this at the two smaller missions – at Espada, he started the new church at the north end of the already-existing west wing of the convento, and got something like half the sacristy built before he left town. This west wing, though, attached to the second courtyard in the same way that the new convento wing at Concepción attached to the original convento – and for all I know, he intended to make the second courtyard into the actual convento, so that the plan of Espada’s convento would have worked out to look the same as Concepción’s. Same, apparently, with San Juan, although we have way less to work with here, since nobody has uncovered enough of the big foundations in the plaza to see what the plan of the building is, and whether it was the new church.
Now, at Concepción and Valero we have identical church plans, and churches set back from standing convento buildings with the intent to connect them together with a new wing. Doesn’t that sound like an explanation to you?
One additional note: Tello was also not so hot at alignments. Look, for example, at the lack of parallel in his layout of the vaulted convento wing at Concepción – the east and west main walls separate by nearly a foot as they go south. This suggests that it wouldn’t be odd for Tello to have screwed up the layout of the convento wing that was to connect the church to the west wing. The various angles and thickness changes are the results of the attempts of later architects to correct Tello’s error.
Details: note the thicker wall of Valero for the first few feet of the facade, up to the little cornice about thigh-high. Note that inside the church, in the walls of the transepts, there’s a similar thickening that forms a ledge across the recessed arches in the end walls of the transepts. I think this is the top of Tello’s actual construction work, marking the point where he stopped and someone else carried the church on up, and down to which Hieronymo Ibarra removed the stone of the fallen church – down to the dependable foundations built by the master mason himself, removing all the crap wall built by whoever failed to pass the builder’s test – does it stay up?
I think in front of the present church of Valero there are burials in the campo santo, but no first church building. Certainly it’s worth a look, if for no other reason than to resolve this question for good.
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crc
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Posts: 30
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Post by crc on Jan 3, 2008 20:27:46 GMT -5
Thanks for the posting Jake; a step-by-step rebuttal coming as soon as I can manage...
-Craig
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crc
Full Member
Posts: 30
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Post by crc on Jan 5, 2008 15:47:26 GMT -5
Request for Jake or Tom:
I can't find a translation for the "ai" in this sentence:
"En la escalera ai tambien su puerta para el Choro."
- Craig
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Post by TRK on Jan 5, 2008 15:59:53 GMT -5
A phonetic corruption of "hay", or "is":
"On (in) the staircase is also its door for the choir."
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