Gary Cartwright
You Aren’t Here
A lack of reverence for the Alamo’s sacred battleground has turned much of the iconic site into a place no one remembers.
CRF says: Alamo Plaza MUST be restored in some fashion, or soon there won't be anything left to save. Having spent a great deal of time in Alamo Plaza over the last ten years, I have witnessed a fast-paced decline in respect for one of America's most significant historic sites. One afternoon while sitting underneath the trees in Alamo Plaza, a group of college students excitedly gathered for photos in front of the church and long barrack. Laughing, two of the males took a pose simulating they were peeing on the wall. Utterly disgusted I yelled at them, "That's great...is this how you want to remember the Alamo?" This of course fell on deaf ears. I have also witnessed people putting their drink cups and soda cans in the niches before going into the church, as well as all the physical garbage that is constantly piling up on the grass and sidewalks. The Alamo guards do their best to curb this kind of behavior, but the point is...THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE TO! As they say, "Likes attract" and the carnival on the west side of the plaza has created the wrong kind of atmosphere on the site of sacred ground. The city can continue to ignore what is really going on in the plaza, and be assured it will only get worse. The moral and physical garbage is knocking on the front door. It won't be much longer before it completely takes over. Wake up San Antonio, before it's too late! (November 17th, 2008 at 3:48pm)
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Considering the abuse heaped on it through the ages, it’s a miracle the Alamo survives at all. The Catholic Church hadn’t even completed work on the church in 1793, when it decided to close the mission. The church didn’t have a roof, much less its famous bell-shaped parapet, until sixty years later, when the U.S. Army used it as a quartermaster’s depot. Following Mexico’s independence from Spain, the building’s stones were nearly sold for auction to finance the new state of Coahuila y Tejas. Shortly before the battle, Sam Houston proposed abandoning the fort in a letter to then-governor Henry Smith, a proposal Smith had the foresight to dismiss. The Alamo was about to be converted to a hotel in 1905 when Clara Driscoll rescued it with a gift of $65,000 and put the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in charge of the site. Somehow it managed to survive several pitched battles within the ranks of the DRT, the most notable being the one between Driscoll and her rival, Adina De Zavala, who barricaded herself inside the convento to protest Driscoll’s plan to demolish the building’s second floor. Another plan, fortunately aborted, would have razed the convento and replaced it with a Beaux Arts—style building.
It was not until 1968 that the long barrack was restored and opened as a museum—at least in name. There wasn’t much to see. When Greg Curtis was there, the relic that caught his eye was the coonskin cap worn by John Wayne in The Alamo. In 2005, to celebrate a century of custodianship of the property by the DRT, the barrack was renovated and upgraded into a true museum. Its artifacts now include weapons of frontier defense, a Bible that belonged to a prominent early Texas family, a ring that belonged to Travis, and reproductions of uniforms worn by the Mexican infantry and the New Orleans Greys (Wayne’s coonskin cap is no longer displayed). The panels covering the windows that face Alamo Plaza are painted with bright depictions of life in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the north end of the barrack porch is a representation of the first hospital in Texas, established at the Alamo’s Spanish garrison in 1805. Outside, between the barrack and the gift shop, is the Wall of History, placed there in 1997, presenting in detail a timeline of the mission and the village across the river, San Antonio de Béxar, and outlining the indispensable role each played in the history of Texas.
Yet inside the nave of the church, visitors will find few explanations. “People want to see the space, not signs,” Alamo historian and curator Bruce Winders told me. Even so, the DRT has always seemed more worshipful of the Alamo than respectful of its history, piously referring to the church as “the shrine.” Fighting through a mob of people, many of them pushing baby carriages, I gave up trying to get a close look at exhibits and concentrated instead on inhaling the essence of the place. People spoke in whispers, sounding more confused than enlightened but curious and aware of a palpable connection to these old walls. Some of them listened to a narration on headsets supplied by the Alamo’s audio-tour service. I crowded in behind a Latino family trying to get a glimpse of Crockett’s rifle and caught fragments of Spanish as the parents explained the story to their two young children. I wasn’t sure of their words, but it was clear from the shimmer of pride in their eyes that they regarded the Alamo as an irreplaceable part of their heritage. Whoever we Texans are as a people, it started here.
The last defenders of the Alamo, probably fewer than twelve, fought inside these church walls. Though neither of the two rooms just inside the main entrance is identified, the one on the right was the baptistery and the room across from it the confessional. Both were used as powder magazines at the time of the battle. Robert Evans, an Irishman who had joined the cause of Texas independence, was attempting to torch the magazines to keep them out of enemy hands when he was shot dead near the front door. Another of the final defenders was James Butler Bonham, who carried a message through the Mexican line asking for reinforcements, then raced back to the Alamo, knowing he would die inside. Jacob Walker, of Tennessee, ran into the sacristy to hide, but pursuing Mexican soldiers shot him and hoisted his body onto their bayonets. The sacristy, a double room on the left side of the corridor, was where the women and children took shelter during the fighting. After the battle ended, Susanna Dickinson and her infant daughter, the only Anglos in the group, were led from the sacristy and out the front door of the church, where she recognized amid the carnage the mutilated corpse of Davy Crockett. She identified Crockett because of his “peculiar cap.” Historians are not certain if Crockett died in battle or was executed, but the oral history handed down from Dickinson (who couldn’t read or write) places the spot where his body fell just outside the northwest corner of the chapel, below walls that still appear pockmarked and battle-scarred. A Mexican olive tree grows there today. As Curtis reminded us, all this drama and more happened in the chapel, but you have to go to considerable trouble to appreciate it.
The City of San Antonio owns 70 percent of the original Alamo compound (the state owns, and the DRT manages, the church and the grounds behind it). Were it so inclined, it could make substantial improvements, as it did a few years back when it renovated the Main Plaza, located next to San Fernando Cathedral. In 1994 the city closed Alamo East, one of two streets that ran through Alamo Plaza. Visitors no longer choke on the fumes from idling tour buses. The motivation for closing the street was as much political as historical, however, coming in response to protests by Native Americans that the plaza had been a burial ground for their people.
No one has yet implemented a grand vision for giving the Alamo a comprehensive perspective, connecting the historical dots, as it were. Foreman represents a group of business, professional, and educational leaders who are working on a plan, but he’s not ready to reveal who they are or what it is. My guess is that Foreman’s scheme will be too grandiose to be practical. He and his people will have to persuade the federal government to repurpose the post office, and restoring the west wall would require demolishing the work of Alfred Giles. “The quandary is,” Winders says, “do you destroy something historic to put up something nonhistoric?”
Unfortunately, this question went unasked for many years. Yet as I crossed the sacred ground, weaving my way through snow cone stands and listening to the grating voice of Stumpy and the other wonders in the phony world of Ripley’s, I realized that we shouldn’t aspire to have the Alamo restored all the way back to 1836, to the ruins of a roofless, dirt-floor church. For one thing, we’d miss the world-famous bell-shaped parapet. Short of total restoration, however, there is plenty of room for improvement. The city could start by closing the remaining lanes of traffic on Alamo Street. It is not too late to remember the Alamo. Believe it or not.
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