World Heritage Center is taking shape
Gateway to San Antonio’s missions opens in 2024
Corazón will be the center of an $8 million World Heritage Center set to break ground next fall as a gateway to the Spanish-indigenous mission sites of San Antonio.
Although some nearby residents have reservations about the project’s scale, location, function and design, officials say the 5,300square-foot building with a 3,700square-foot veranda will provide something that’s long been needed on the South Side: a central location where those interested in the five missions scattered along both sides of the San Antonio River can orient themselves. It’s set to open in spring 2024.
One of the center’s early design elements is a ceramic tile map tracing the path southward from the Alamo to Mission Concepción, Mission San José, Mission San Juan and finally Mission Espada on the far South Side.
At a recent community meeting, Park Ranger PT Lathrop cautioned against leaving out Rancho de las Cabras, where ruins still stand on ranchland near Floresville that served the Native American community at Espada. But he agreed with the plan’s goal of connecting stories of the river, acequias, architecture and neighborhoods with corazón — the Spanish word for heart that also can mean courage, love or compassion.
“One thing that I’ve been really impressed by is the corazón. There’s not a community like San Antonio,” said Lathrop, a National Park Service ranger who joined San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — his ninth national park — in March.
But while San Antonio has embraced the missions’ 2015 designation as the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Texas and one of just 24 nationwide, Lathrop said the city could better promote the national park brand as a catalyst for tourism and community pride.
The center is funded with 2017
bond dollars — $5 million for the building and $2.25 million for landscaping and site improvements. Another $845,000 from the local Tricentennial Commission will pay for art, design enhancements and interpretive elements. Its two key themes: ancestors and community. The city’s World Heritage Office hired the Witte Museum to develop the plan, which included community input through local surveys and focus groups.
The center will be built along Roosevelt Avenue, between the restored Mission Drive-in movie marquee and Mission Branch Library, just over a quarter-mile north of the heavily restored Mission San José — the most frequently visited South Side mission.
Colleen Swain, director of the city’s World Heritage Office, which will staff the center, said the facility will be “one of the jewels” in the Mission Marque Plaza. The area, she said, is evolving into a “complete campus,” hosting outdoor movies, markets and poetry events.
“Not every World Heritage Site gets an opportunity to have a center like this. It’s a trend that we’re seeing more and more in the European countries. It’s a great asset to really showcase San Antonio,” Swain said.
Plans for the center include:
• A U-shaped gallery featuring the giant missions map and wayfinding area.
• A short film.
• Exhibits on ancestral voices, community perspectives.
• Mission site highlights with recorded audio and smartphone technology.
Preliminary designs by Dunaway Associates and Muñoz & Co. show a wraparound veranda and large windows providing natural lighting to create an indoor-outdoor experience that mimics being at the missions.
The exhibits at the center will touch on significant features of each mission, such as:
• Frescoes and the nation’s oldest unrestored stone church at Concepción.
• A working acequia and farmlands at San Juan.
• Espada’s unusual brickwork and distinctive church doorway.
“We want to make sure that each of the missions are highlighted and that all of their unique, wonderful characteristics are on display,” Michelle Everidge, chief of strategic initiatives at the Witte, told about 40 people at a planning meeting. “We’ve all heard about the Alamo. But we want to make sure that every mission really receives its due credit.”
The center will have restrooms, a community meeting room, stations for charging electronic devices and possibly a shop that sells wares made by local artists. The plan recommends an outdoor water-filling station, a water play area for children or other features to connect the center to the river theme and a touchscreen kiosk that offers directions and event schedules.
Initially constructed as San Antonio’s first permanent mission, the state-owned Alamo draws about 1.6 million visitors downtown annually. The four federally and church-run missions to the south together have had similar attendance. The park service estimates 1.1 million people visited the South Side missions park in 2020, despite the pandemic, and spent $84.3 million in neighborhoods near the four sites.
To tie the building to the missions, local artist Adriana Garcia will design a symbol to be incorporated into the structure’s ornamentation. Garcia said she’s developing a concept of the Four Directions in Native American spirituality and is consulting mission descendants on other ideas.
Anyone wanting to give input, send a scanned photo or get involved with the project can contact the World Heritage Office at worldheritage@sanantonio.gov.
“We want to make sure that the corazón is woven all the way through — the uniqueness, the character, the love, the family, the art,” Everidge said.
Residents seemed to support the concepts, but some had reservations about the location, saying the city should spend more for a larger site or one closer to the south main entrance of Mission San José.
“No design innovation can undo a bad location,” said Brady Alexander, who called the conceptual renderings out of character for a building honoring 10,000 years of Indigenous history.
Terry Ybanez, president of the Mission San José Neighborhood Association, said she’d hoped the center would include more space for performances by historians, novelists and Indigenous and Chicano poets “that need to be heard on the South Side.”
She said the center could be the first venue of its kind on the Southeast Side “to showcase professional artists … and I can see the collaborations of the (mission) descendants.”
A proposal is in the works for a nearby outdoor pavilion that could accommodate larger performances as a second phase to follow the center’s construction.
Swain said the location “makes sense for a lot of reasons,” since it’s on city land and builds on the synergy of the marquee plaza.
“We are looking at ways so that if we host an art event or a poetry reading, that can happen at the center depending on the numbers, or with that pavilion that would host larger groups,” she said.