Gone But Not Forgotten in San Antonio! - Part I (Mission: famous, winter)

[940]

Wow, Primo...those are great! They bring back a lot of memories, especially the Wonder Theater, the Central Park Fox and the Fredericksburg Rd Drive In. I also remember passing the Broadway Theater, across from Luby's, quite a bit while in college at TU.

It's good to see the Colonies North Mall too...the old Handy Andy and the Eckerd's!

[hhwolfman]

Originally Posted by linskie

I lived in SA from '76 to '85 in the West Ave/Blanco area.

1963 through 1989 Southside 206 W Petaluma Terrell Wells McCullom Area

[hhwolfman]

Originally Posted by munerider

I, too, won't darken the door of an HEB unless a gun is held to my head...I hit the famer's markets and roadsides for most of my veggies, Whole Foods and La Fiesta...HEB and Walmart are slum-lords and those who patronize them are little more than drones & minions. FIGHT THE MACHINE! DON'T FEED THE BEAST (PS...same goes for CVS, Shell, etc.)!!!...WHEW! There...THAT feels better!

IF you lived in Tempe AZ You would be like me and wish for an HEB. the Lowest priced grocery store here is 40 to 70 percent higher than HEB. Regular Price For Instance. 90 percent Ground beef Is $4.99 a pound. And sell items here are still around 20 percent over HEB regular Prices. Shame Shame on you. My Kingdom for an HEB.

[hhwolfman]

Originally Posted by GWhopper

Thank you for this! I remember this place's brief existance, I had gone there a couple of times. I had forgotten the name and had meant to post here asking the forum if they remembered it, but you just answered it!

Man they had good Baby Back Ribs there and Great Pinball Machines. One of my Favorite there was Playboy 2.

[GWhopper]

Originally Posted by BrianW

If it's the one I'm thinking of, I didn't realize it was still there. What is the name, please? Mind you, I haven't been in that area in around 30 years!

Well, now it is St. Anthony the Great Orthodox Church. I don't know what it was 30 years ago. Our Parish bought it in the 80's. Before that some strange holocaust religion owned it. The boarded up all the windows and did all kinds of crazy stuff to the building. The original owners and builders were presbyterian, though, their church is still around. The corner stone of the building still has their name and date. I'll get it for you on Sunday. The building was built in 1917. We have restored and preserved it, it's now a historical building. The architect, Alfred Giles, was a famous Texas architect. The only other religious structure he ever designed was a chapel at UT.

If you want a piece of completely useless trivia, if you have ever been to the original Long Horn Cafe on Blanco, the red bricks in the courtyard are the very bricks from Alfred Giles' home and the same type of brick used in the construction of our church. When we started the the first renovation of the building, someone went and asked if we could use some of their bricks. In the end, though, there was little damage to the outside brick work, so we never needed to use them. All the damage was internal, and it was pretty bad.

I used to be a photographer and I had to document the internal damage to the structure. If I can find some old pictures, I'll scan them here and let you see the then and now shots of the interior. It will blow your mind.

[GWhopper]

Primo,

I have to say, the shot of Colonies North Mall brings a tear to my eye. This is how I will always remember it. That Eckerd's, before it used to be a Sommer's Drug Store and my mom worked there when she got pregnant with me!!!

[GWhopper]

If any of you are interested in my ongoing saga to dig up more info on Wolfe's Inn, I did finally buy that postcard that was on ebay this week. I figured there might be some more info on the back, and there was, though I am not sure if it is helpful.

It says:

Wolfe's inn has been known for its Delicious food all over the world.
Wolfe's Inn Established in 1915
Fredricksburg Road (U.S. Highway 87 North)
3 miles from City Limits

Jimmie Harris, Owner-- Phone P-20145

Chicken and Steak Dinners Served Family style, biscuits, preserves, gravy, dessert, drink

[940]

3 miles from City Limits...hmmm, I wonder where it was located on Fred. Rd? 3 miles from the city limits years ago would have been probably down towards the Tip Top or even further south? Just guessing here...

[GWhopper]

Today has been a good day for the GBNF thread. Primo posted some of the best pictures of gone but not forgotten places in SA that I have ever hoped to see. A couple of hours ago, I found a treasure trove of stuff that qualifies as Gone And Forgotten in SA, (but very little on my own personal obsession of Wolfe's Inn!) Last week, I posted earlier about the "Lost Irish Village of Avoca" and today I found out about it's history. I had to pay for the article, so I assume I can't post it freely here due to copywrite laws, so let me summarize it for those of you who are interested.

Irish settlers built Avoca in the 1830's, at the head waters of the San Antonio River. This was a full-flung planned community village. The Irish settlers bought the land after the Texas revolution, built and named the streets, and built houses. Much of Avoca was on the site where Incarnate Word now stands, though a portion of it occupied some of modern day Alamo Heights as well, near the present day college and HEB Marketplace. After the Irish had legally purchased the land (I don't know from whom at this point and probably never will), the San Antonio city leaders got nervous and realized that whoever owned the head waters of the San Antonio River could effectively control the river.

This caused a panic among SA's city leaders, since the river was key to the economic life-blood of the city at that time. So they used some kind of legal ruse utilizing a Spanish land grant made to the city to claim ownership of the land Avoca occupied. So they took over the land, kicked off the Irish settlers and claimed it for themselves. In 1849, the city needed to raise money to build a Court House, a jail, and a school. So they sold the land to a city alderman named JR Sweet for the princely sum of $1475. The Irish village of Avoca was forgotten and was now called, informerly, Old Sweet's Place. One quote which is not copywrited, states:

[SIZE=1]...without doubt one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, places in Texas, its woodland grace and parklike beauty so heightened by the perpetual mystery of its profound and noble springs. This is the Head of the River. There are other fine properties in this neighborhood with exceptional water advantages and privileges, but this property was really the key to the situation, the Ojo de Agua, the birthright of the city.[/SIZE]

Sweet then sold the property to the mother of George W. Brackenridge. I haven't been able to find the dollar amount yet, but you can bet it was more than $1475. By the time the civil war broke out, the head waters had become polluted with sewege, garbage and human waste. Several years of drought reduced the head waters to a shadow of their formerselves. Suddenly, owning the headwaters of the San Antonio river looked like a losing proposition, so George W. Breckenridge tried to sell his then seemingly worthless land to the city for $50,000. In a letter, he melodramatically wrote:

[SIZE=1]I have seen this bold, bubbling, laughing river dwindle and fade away...This river is my child and it is dying and I cannot stay here to see its last gasps...I must go.[/SIZE]

The City didn't go for it. Heck, I wouldn't have gone for it. If you can steal it once you can probably find a way to steal it again. Regardless, old George W (as opposed to the new George W) got a much better deal selling the land to the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word for $120,000. This wasn't all the land once owned by the poor Irish settlers, much of it was also donated to the city and became Breckinridge Park, and some remained in the Breckinridge family and was passed or sold into private hands and eventually became a part of what is now Alamo Heights.

What's even more cool, is that both Primo and myself and others have gone to the head waters of the San Antonio River in the last few weeks, and they (there's more than one!) are flowing fiercely again!!!

[GWhopper]

Originally Posted by 940

3 miles from City Limits...hmmm, I wonder where it was located on Fred. Rd? 3 miles from the city limits years ago would have been probably down towards the Tip Top or even further south? Just guessing here...

I know where exactly where it was located. It was located on the property where a Hooter's, a two story office building, and a tube-n-Lub are located on the north side of Wurzbach just before it meets Fredricksburg, before Wurzbach runs into the medical center. I was there as a kid when it still existed, in it's last days, and it made an obviously lasting impression on me. The small ruins of the gate are still visible at the intersection of Fredricksburg and Wurzback across from Aldo's. If you are driving west up Wurzbach from I-10, it was directly across from Dry-Dock.