Alamo exhibit immerses visitors in mission era and 1836 battle
A high-tech audiovisual experience in the Alamo Church is now connecting visitors to one of the site’s most sacred spaces and how it might have looked and sounded during both the mission era and 1836 battle.
The Alamo Sacristy Exhibit, which opened this week, offers a representation of a side room inside the church where priests held Mass and worship services at the Mission San Antonio de Valero from about 1756 to 1793.
Based on faded pigments, researchers believe all four of the room’s walls and the ceiling were decorated with a white lime wash, painted with bands and patterns of flowers, pomegranates and other shapes in green, yellow, red, orange and pink.
Although visitors must have timed tickets, entry to the church and the exhibit are free. The exhibit is funded privately through $250,000 from the Nancy Smith Hurd Foundation, a 10-yearold philanthropic organization.
“Visitors will come in and they’ll actually get a true understanding of what the sacristy was like during the mission era, and then actually feel what the families felt when they were in here during the battle of 1836,” said Pam Jary Rosser, Alamo conservator.
An archaeology report released last year identifies the sacristy as the mission’s fourth and final church. The stone church was never completed as designed after its roof collapsed in the 1750s.
The new, five-minute video production replicates the ornate 1772 appearance of the sacristy’s north end, with a time-lapse effect tracking movement of sunlight through east- and west-facing windows across terra cotta floor tiles. A tolling bell and period music reinforce the mood — classical string instruments and a choir singing a traditional Franciscan hymn, “Para dar luz inmortal” (“To Give Immortal Light.”)
The scene shifts dramatically to 1836, and the sounds of bombardment and frightened squeals of horses accompany flashes of light from the predawn battle. Silhouettes of women and children — family members of Alamo defenders who took refuge in the building — are seen in the foreground as the explosions shake loose debris and crack the walls. The frescoes, murals and other markings of the mission era are still visible. Birds are heard chirping as peace returns to the site.
Alamo officials were careful to install the arch-shaped screen, projector and speakers without making contact with the walls or ceiling. Fans were installed to disperse heat from the overhead projector, and monitors are being used to measure changes in temperature, relative humidity and dew point.
“The production, the lighting, nothing is causing any damage to the existing frescoes,” Rosser said.
The decor marked the sacristy as a hallowed space. Missionary friars and craftsmen from Querétaro, Mexico, brought the technique of using stencils and charcoal to sketch designs and apply color onto fresh plaster. Indigenous people who lived at the mission knew where to find mineral pigments such as lead, ochre and iron oxide, and may have helped apply them.
Rosser also has found traces of color on the Alamo Church’s iconic facade — green pigment on the keystone above the door and yellow ochre on the columns, suggesting the structure’s exterior might have been brightly painted, like the churches at missions San José and Concepción.
“We know that the façade has fragments of tinted lime washes, but the design that would’ve been on the flat surface of the façade is unknown,” she said.
When the U.S. Army took over the Alamo as a military depot in the mid-19th century, the sacristy became a storeroom, made smaller by a replaced wall, the frescoes obscured but preserved by whitewash. They were rediscovered in 2000. Conservation experts have shaved away layers of whitewash and used high-definition imagery and chemical analyses to try to discern their original appearance.
The exhibit shows “known elements” of the markings, such as three-petaled flowers representing the Holy Trinity and pomegranates symbolizing death and resurrection, along with guesswork. Gallagher & Associates, which produced the exhibit and is program manager on the Alamo’s ongoing site makeover, used “artistic estimation” to guide the appearance of some shapes, designs and other visual details.
“I continue to be making discoveries in here,” said Rosser, pointing to the ceiling, which has a shell motif and a “dark pattern” that has partially faded.
Alamo Communications Director Jonathan Huhn said the staff will gather groups of about a dozen visitors into the sacristy to see the exhibit and give them a moment to ponder before guiding them out. The exhibit is “an appetizer” for a visitor center and museum that will open in 2027, providing a “more comprehensive understanding of what the Alamo was for San Antonio and Texas,” he said.
“The Alamo Sacristy Exhibit acts as a window to the site’s past, spanning centuries of rich history, and offers a glimpse into the progress and future of the Alamo redevelopment plan,” Huhn said.
The foundation that funded the exhibit is named for Nancy Smith Hurd, a San Antonian who had ancestors who came to Texas from Tennessee before the 1836 battle. She died in 2010.