Land Office begins makeover at Alamo ahead of siege anniversary
Taking the first steps toward a full makeover of Alamo Plaza, the Texas General Land Office has opened an outdoor welcome center and put up signs prohibiting scooters, skateboards and bicycles.
The goal is to encourage visitors to reflect on the sacrifices and struggles for Texas independence without those modern-day distractions.
Preparing for the anniversary of the famed 13-day siege and battle at the Alamo in 1836, the Land Office has scheduled a mix of free and paid, ticketed events. A re-enactment at 10 a.m. Saturday of the arrival of Mexican Gen. Santa An-
na’s army in San Antonio on Feb. 23, 1836, will lead off events planned daily through the March 6 anniversary. About 200 Alamo defenders, surrounded by some 1,600 Mexican soldiers, died in the predawn battle or were executed that day in 1836.
The anniversary events are listed on the Alamo website, thealamo.org, including a visit by renowned Alamo artist Gary Zaboly. He’s returning to San Antonio to talk about the battle site and challenge misconceptions about the way some Texian Alamo defenders were dressed.
The young Alamo commander, Lt. Col. William Barret Travis, probably was not in a glimmering dress uniform, as depicted in art and movies, said Zaboly, who will give a lecture at noon Monday at the Alamo on the Texians’ appearance. The New Orleans Greys at the Alamo probably were not still in uniforms, unless they were in tatters, said Zaboly, who lives in New York but participated in last year’s Alamo commemorations.
“There was no laundromat at the Alamo,” he said. “They couldn’t have been wearing their Sunday best. They were in a dirty, dusty, muddy situation.”
He does, however, hold out the possibility that David Crockett, former Tennessee congressman and the Alamo’s most famous defender, may have worn a hat made of raccoon skin at the Alamo — as depicted in television and movies.
“Sometimes the romantic myth is actually true,” Zaboly said.
Zaboly’s lecture costs $15 and includes a box lunch. He also will be in the plaza Sunday and Monday, answering questions from visitors and passersby about the battle at no cost, using his artwork as a visual aid.
“I can explain what this place looked like in 1836,” he said. “A lot of people who come to the Alamo have no real concept of what happened there.”
The new signs and visitor kiosk, which operates the same hours as the Alamo complex — 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. — went up earlier this month. To help visitors understand the Alamo site, the Land Office, city and nonprofit Alamo Endowment plan to overhaul Alamo Plaza, creating more pedestrian space and adding a 130,000square-foot museum.
City Council approved the sixyear plan in October, voting to close streets to traffic, relocate the 1930s Alamo Cenotaph and enter into a 50-year lease for the Land Office to manage the area of the plaza once enclosed by mission walls.
That lease took effect Jan. 1. Public demonstrations are being allowed south of the plaza’s historic footprint, which has been designated by the city for First Amendment activities.
“Alamo Plaza is being transformed into a place of dignity and reverence,” Karina Erickson, interim communications director with the Land Office, said in an email.
Preservation work, including scans of the roof and walls of the Alamo’s mission-era church and Long Barrack, also have begun. Previous study of the iconic Alamo church in recent years has revealed its limestone walls, bearing the weight of a concrete roof since 1920, are not completely solid, and are hollow or filled with rubble in some places.
Erickson said experts recently began a 20-month investigation of the church, using thermal and infrared imaging to create a threedimensional model that shows where walls have interior voids and may lack structural integrity.
“Our goal is to understand how the church was constructed, how deep are the stones that comprise the masonry walls, what are the sizes of the voids in the masonry walls, and where moisture is and how it moves through the church,” Erickson said.
The Long Barrack is closed, and will re-open as exhibit space once preservation work there is completed, she said. Artifacts that had been displayed there can now be seen in the Alamo Special Exhibition Hall at the south end of the complex.
“There was no laundromat at the Alamo. They couldn’t have been wearing their Sunday best. They were in a dirty, dusty, muddy situation.”
Gary Zaboly, renowned Alamo artist