Major repairs needed on San Antonio structure
SAN ANTONIO — As grand openings go, the one for Fort Sam Houston’s Main Post Chapel was grander than most. A crowd of 25,000 turned out for the Oct. 17, 1909, dedication ceremony, the star of which was President William Howard Taft.
The copper-domed chapel, built in the ornate Beaux-Arts architectural style, was Fort Sam’s first permanent house of worship for troops and their families. It became known as the Gift Chapel because it was constructed on land donated by the city of San Antonio, with money raised by community leaders and military personnel.
Taft marveled, in his stilted way, at the close collaboration between the local community and the Army.
“It has not always been so at every post, but that you should love the Army and that the Army should love you under the conditions is a noteworthy fact in which I rejoice,” the 27th president told the crowd. “This is a beautiful post.”
The chapel is still standing 115 years later, but it’s in sad shape. The building is mold-infested and has been declared unfit for human use. Air Force officials shuttered it in December 2022.
Early cost estimates for the chapel’s restoration range from $20 million to $30 million — but the final tab could be significantly higher. The military hasn’t yet done a top-to-bottom review of the structure to determine the full scope of needed repairs.
Unfortunately, there’s little or no money available for such a project in the foreseeable future.
The Gift Chapel is one part of a larger problem at Fort Sam, which opened in 1876. The post has 1,153 buildings, including the chapel, on the National Register of Historic Places, and some of them are in serious disrepair and vacant.
Six are slated for renovation, and 19 others will face the wrecking ball. Among the ones to be razed, the oldest was built in the 1890s.
Joint Base San Antonio, which includes Fort Sam Houston and the Lackland and Randolph Air Force bases, is under the command of Air Force Brig. Gen. Russell Driggers. Funding for construction at the installations, including restoration projects, comes largely from the Air Force’s budget.
The Air Force’s overall spending priorities include building up major bases in the Pacific, where an increasingly belligerent China is America’s chief adversary.
Still, five renovation projects on buildings registered as historic are in the works at JBSA installations, costing $10 million to $15 million each. One of them is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Barracks near Fort Sam’s New Braunfels Avenue gate, where the famous general — and 34th president — lived as a lieutenant. It will become office space for U.S. Army North.
Still, it’s anyone’s guess when it will be the Gift Chapel’s turn. With a lot of luck, the work could be complete in five years. However, that appears unlikely.
JBSA competes with other bases for money for construction and renovation projects, but the local command also can tap funding from “mission partners,” including the Army and Navy. In the case of the Gift Chapel, however, the funding most likely would come out of Air Force repair and renovation dollars appropriated by Congress.
“The Air Force and each of the services provide guidance on the prioritization of how we spend the precious dollars that we have for infrastructure, whether it’s for military construction or renovation and restoration,” Driggers said. “And so we abide by those priorities and compete against other bases — the needs that we have versus the needs those others have.”
A major priority in San Antonio is troop dormitories, some of which have suffered from the same agerelated problems plaguing the Gift Chapel. They’ll have top funding priority.
Driggers said he won’t know where the Gift Chapel will fall on the priority list until engineers determine this year just how bad the historic structure has gotten.
The possum incident
In 1997, Fort Sam was home to more than 900 vacant historic buildings, including the old Brooke Army
Medical Center.
Some San Antonio civic leaders worried that with so many decrepit structures on its tranquil grounds just northeast of downtown, Fort Sam would wind up on the next base closure list. The post’s chief spokesman at the time, Phil Reidinger, echoing the concerns of post commanders and generals who loved the historic nature of Fort Sam, often talked about that possibility.
It wasn’t just that many of its buildings were 100 years old or more; some of them weren’t well suited to their present-day uses. Hundreds of the buildings were also dilapidated, a problem underscored one day in a dining hall where a possum fell through the ceiling, landing on a combat medic trainee’s lunch tray.
“We weren’t even serving possum that day,” a lieutenant colonel reportedly told the chief of staff of thenU.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
Before the Base Realignment and Closure Commission convened in 2005, Army Lt. Gen. James Peake, a BAMC commander who later headed the Veterans Affairs Department, worked with local leaders on a plan to use private-sector developers and contractors to renovate old Fort Sam buildings and lease them back to the Army. That move helped persuade the Army to move U.S. Army South from Puerto Rico to Fort Sam in 2003.
Peake told the San Antonio Express-News that one building, the 129-year-old Stilwell House, was renovated with private funding. But he also noted that the Army isn’t allowed to solicit money from the public, making projects such as the Stilwell House renovation difficult to pull off. The military effectively has to wait for a benefactor to come along.
“Their function is warfighting and keeping the nation safe. Their primary mission is not to be a museum. Although history is really important, and the museums become a part of our heritage, it’s not the primary mission,” said Peake, 79, of Austin. “And in a time of a really constrained fiscal environment, there are trade-offs that have to be made.”
Stately gathering place
The Gift Chapel grew old gracefully, at least by outward appearances. A little more than a year ago, it was still used for worship services, funerals, and other ceremonies and events.
The Gift Chapel also played a part in one of Fort Sam’s darkest chapters. It was the venue in 1917-18 for the largest murder trial in American history. In all, 110 Black soldiers were convicted of mutiny and other crimes tied to the 1917 Houston Riot, which claimed 18 lives. Nineteen of the soldiers were hanged at Fort Sam. In November, the Army granted clemency to the 110 soldiers.
Fixing the old chapel will require patience. Before work begins, an architect and an engineer will conduct a study of the facility this year and issue their findings.
“Once we know exactly what we could do and get the money for it, then it’s anywhere from a nine- to 12-month process to finish the design, go out and do acquisitions, and hire a company to start the work,” said Jeffrey McNeeley, deputy director of the 502nd Civil Engineer Group at JBSA. “A project this size I could see being easily two, 21⁄2, three years — with the emphasis on when we get the money.”
The work would be done in phases. “There’s a process we’re going through, and if there are ways to break up a project, then you could speed up certain aspects of it. But obviously we want to make sure that whenever this thing gets opened back up it’s going to last another 100 years,” said Driggers, the JBSA commander. “We’re going to do it right.”
Mold was found where dozens of flags are anchored inside the chapel, forcing the command to close the building and move worship services elsewhere. Tin pipes that funneled rainwater deteriorated over the years, causing leaks that damaged the structure. Dehumidifiers dot the building, running night and day.
Engineers also discovered water damage and black mold in the chapel and the basement, site of the Houston Riot trials 106 years ago. Black mold popped up at dormitories and other structures across the three major installations and the Camp Bullis training range, which make up JBSA.
The engineers’ first priority will be to examine the Gift Chapel’s exterior to see if the foundation has shifted or the roof is leaking. It’s critical to ensure that moisture isn’t getting into the building.
Once that’s done, interior renovation work, ranging from possibly replacing the heating and air-conditioning system to installing or upgrading modern electrical wiring, can begin.
“And then we get back to the beautification, and that would be getting after the paint and the other cleaning aspects, both internal and external,” Driggers said.
On the plus side, the Gift Chapel’s distinctive copper dome was replaced just 21⁄2 years ago.
The chapel was designed by San Antonio architect Leo Dielmann, whose father, John, supervised the construction work. The Beaux-Arts architectural style Dielmann chose had its origins in Paris in the 1830s. It was a favored style for civic buildings and memorials in the early 1900s.
The chapel’s buff tone facade, central Roman copper dome and neoclassical design are hallmarks of Beaux-Arts.
Plans for building the chapel began with a fundraising drive in 1907 led by a chaplain at Fort Sam, Thomas Dickson. Donations came from more than 1,000 San Antonio residents and military families. Dickson raised $50,000 for construction. Driggers said the Gift Chapel remains a big deal. “This has a very special place in the Army heart,” he said. “We definitely pay close attention to honoring the historic nature of these buildings. And we make sure that whatever we do to fix these buildings balances getting them back to code so that they’re on modern standards and not losing any of their historical value.”