The Alamo, formally known as Mission San Antonio de Valero, is the most famous building in Texas, and one of the most famous in the world. The site of a tragic defeat of Texian forces fighting againt Mexican soldiers during the Texas Revolution, the Alamo is a place of intense heroism, bravery, and desperation. It's where famous Texans Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William B. Travis died. It has been known ever since as a shrine to Texas liberty, and has a special place in the heart of every Texan.
Less well-known is the Alamo's architectural importance as an example of the early Spanish Baroque style.
From the Texas Monthly magazine artcle "The Reign of Spain" by Michael Ennis: (
visit link)
"But the splendor of imperial Spain is not as remote as we might think. Last year curators at . . . the Alamo were astonished to discover faint remnants of Spanish colonial-era frescoes on the walls of the same sacristy that probably served as a last redoubt for Texan defenders in 1836. . . . the frescoes are ghostly snippets, a few fragmentary, rust-colored bands of floral and geometric patterns that once circuited the walls and outlined the ceiling vault. But these phantom images vividly remind us that the Alamo started out as San Antonio de Valero, one of more than two dozen missions scattered across the breadth of Texas, each a monument to the same combustible mixture of faith and power that lit up Spain’s golden age. . . . Well before Tejas was even a glimmer in the eye of Anglo American filibusters and Stephen F. Austin’s colonists, her tiny frontier population took part in a complex cultural dialogue between the New World and the great art centers of the Old World.
. . .
San Antonio de Valero was founded in 1718, the first of five missions built along the San Antonio River by Franciscan friars, who established all the Texas missions. . . . In 1756 work began on the mission church now known as the Alamo (for a squadron of lancers from the Mexican town of Alamo de Parras who were billeted there in the early 1800’s, after the mission had been secularized). . .
The present facade of the Alamo was probably intended to reach three stories surmounted by twin bell towers; only the first story and the partially finished second survive (the trademark arched gable that now tops it off was added by the U.S. Army in 1850). Known as retablo style because it was intended to echo an interior retablo—the lavishly decorated, multi-story repository for sacred paintings and sculptures that towered behind the altar in Spanish churches—the facade has four scallop-shell niches that once sheltered now-vanished statues of saints. The vine tendrils and fleurs-de-lis that frame the niches and the entrance portal are expertly carved but oddly stylized in a flat, shallow relief suggestive of both Mudéjar and tequitqui. The two pairs of columns that frame the first-story niches are even more complex composites, with squat Tuscan proportions, narrow Corinthian-style flutes on the bottom half, and ornate Corinthian capitals; midway, the columns are abruptly divided, with the upper half done in a distinctive corkscrew pattern known as salomónica, or Solomonic. Thought to have originated in Solomon’s Temple, salomónica was the exotic hallmark of the Spanish baroque.
Even in its fragmentary state, the Alamo is arguably the finest piece of authentic early Spanish baroque style in North America. "
From the Handbook of Texas online, a brief history of the Alamo: (
visit link)
"ALAMO. San Antonio de Valero Mission (originally referred to as San Antonio de Padua) was authorized by the viceroy of Mexico in 1716. Fray Antonio de Olivares, who brought with him Indian converts and the records from San Francisco Solano Mission near San Juan Bautista on the Rio Grande, established the mission at the site of present San Antonio in 1718 . . . The present site was selected in 1724; the cornerstone of the chapel was laid on May 8, 1744.
Founded for the purpose of Christianizing and educating the Indians, the mission later became a fortress and was the scene of many conflicts prior to the siege of 1836. Its activity as a mission began to wane after 1765, and it was abandoned in 1793, the archives being removed to nearby San Fernando Church.
In 1803 the Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras, a company of Spanish soldiers from Álamo de Parras, Coahuila, Mexico, occupied the abandoned mission, using its buildings as barracks for a number of years.
From this association probably originated the name Alamo. According to some historians, the name was derived from a grove of cottonwood trees growing on the banks of the acequia, álamo being the Spanish word for "cottonwood." The Alamo was occupied by Mexican forces almost continuously from 1803 to December 1835, when the fortress under Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos was surrendered to Texan forces.
On February 23, 1836, Mexican forces under the command of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna besieged Col. William B. Travis and his Texas garrison in the Alamo. The siege of the Alamo lasted thirteen days and was climaxed on March 6 with a complete loss of all the combatant Texans (see ALAMO, BATTLE OF THE).
After the fall of the Alamo, the building was practically in ruins, but no attempt was made at that time to restore it. The Republic of Texas, on January 13, 1841, passed an act returning the church of the Alamo to the Catholic Church. After Texas was annexed to the United States, it was declared that the Alamo was property of the United States, and in 1848 the United States government took over the building and grounds and until the Civil War used them for quartermaster purposes. For some time the Alamo was claimed by the city of San Antonio, the Catholic Church, and the United States government. The United States government finally leased the property from the Catholic Church and made some improvements. During the Civil War the Confederates used the building, but after the close of the war the United States government again took over and used it until 1876.
Under an act of April 23, 1883, Texas purchased from the church the Alamo property and placed the Alamo in the custody of the city of San Antonio . . . . This system continued until January 25, 1905, when the Texas legislature passed a resolution ordering the governor to purchase that part of the old Alamo fortress occupied by a business concern. It was further ordered that the governor should deliver the property thus acquired, with the property then owned by the state (the chapel of the Alamo), to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas... (until the State of Texas reclaimed the Alamo in 2012.)"
Details of the Battle of the Alamo, also from the Handbook of Texas online are available here: (
visit link)