Heritage and Identity in the Early Twentieth-Century Preservation of the San Antonio Missions

Abstract

The early history of preservation initiatives at San Antonio’s eighteenth-century Spanish missions took place within a complex evolution of regional identity in Texas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Adina De Zavala, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the San Antonio Conservation Society led preservation efforts that were integral components of the cultural construction of heritage memory and identity in San Antonio. In the late nineteenth century, the missions were irresistible symbols of a romantic past for the area’s growing Anglo-American elites. Many attempted to appropriate Spanish colonial heritage to create a distinct image for the city as part of a national revival of colonial-era design around the turn of the century. By the 1930s, local preservationists largely repositioned the historic complexes as both reflective of San Antonio’s historic foundation and emblematic of its modern identity. The early twentieth-century restoration and preservation campaigns at the San Antonio missions, which culminated in the large-scale restoration and reconstruction of Mission San José in 1936, manifested changing understandings of the historical and architectural significance of the city’s Spanish colonial heritage.