San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Lafitte Street neighborhood fell to progress
I am trying to find out where Lafitte Street was in 1912. My grandmother Helen Goolsby lived in a boarding house at 319½ Lafitte St. I believe this was in the HemisFair ’68 fairgrounds, but
I’m not sure exactly where. I’d like to know if by any chance her house is one of the few that is still standing. I’m also looking for the location of the San Antonio Art Glass Co. at that time — that’s where she worked as a designer. She designed sanctuary windows for Laurel Heights United Methodist and the Baptist Temple (since removed and replaced), Center Point United Methodist Church and the Hermann Sons “Herman the Great” window. My grandfather was Chester Slimp Sr. of the Slimp Oil Co. that was in the 300 block of Commerce Street, and she was pretty much just a block off that — probably walked by the storefront daily on her way downtown!
One of the qualities that may have attracted your grandmother and others to this neighborhood just southeast of downtown was exactly what would do it in half a century later. Classified advertisements for furnished rooms in this area off South Alamo Street often start with “Close in,” desirable for tenants who wanted to save streetcar fare by walking to work.
Her home was described in the San Antonio Light, May 11, 1913, as a “Close-in, nice cool furnished room in small private family, $6 a month, every convenience.” Rooms at 319½ Lafitte St. were advertised every six months or so, occasionally with the winter variation, “Nice sunny rooms.”
A San Antonio Conservation Society Library volunteer found that the owners were D.S. (David) and Mamie Taylor, who lived on Lafitte Street (no number specified) as of the 1910 U.S. census. At that time, he was 50 and she was 35; his occupation was given as “own income,” maybe from rental properties, and she had “none,” as was then usual for women who didn’t work outside the home.
On the Sanborn Insurance Co. map (volume 3, sheet 242) online at the University of Texas libraries site, 319½ Lafitte St. appears to be a narrow, twostory wood-frame building, with one or two rooms on each floor. A broken line at the front of the ground floor might indicate a sleeping porch, which were commonly advertised as attractive features of rentals in this time and place. Conservation society librarian Beth Standifird points out the address is marked with a D for dwelling, rather than being labeled as a boardinghouse, so the Taylors probably didn’t provide meals.
This mixed-use neighborhood — residential with service and other business premises — looked pretty good and, at the same time, not so good to planners of the HemisFair ’68 world’s fair. It was close to downtown attractions but not of much interest to fairgoers and other tourists. Though it wasn’t a slum, civic leaders managed to get federal urbanrenewal funds to acquire the property for clearance and development into a 92.6-acre fair site. Owners were compensated — fairly or not, depending on whom you believe — and the area bounded by South Alamo, Commerce and Market streets was cleared.
Of all the structures that had filled the neighborhood’s streets, 1,349 were razed to make way for the 92.6-acre fairgrounds. The existing architecture represented “a hodgepodge of French, Victorian, Frontier, Mexican, Colonial and Classic design,” said a story about HemisFair’s top architect, O’Neil Ford, in the San Antonio Express and News, Feb. 6, 1965. Ford had made similar decisions about which structures deserved to remain during the 1930s renovation of the La Villita arts community.
Early predictions said that
50, then 30 of the “hodgepodge” buildings would be allowed to stand. When the fair opened April 6, 1968, only 22 of the old buildings were saved — mostly 19th-century buildings with a historical pedigree derived from their owners, architects or building styles. Most fair exhibitors and restaurants moved into brand-new pavilions, but some occupied the rare survivors. Known by the best-known owners’ names, they were the Eagar, Espinoza, Mayer Halff, Kampmann, Koehler, LonginiHermann, Pereida, Schultze and Sweeney houses, along with a few others that have prevailed with intermittent use and repairs.
Most of the streets in your grandmother’s old neighborhood are gone or much truncated. Lafitte — sometimes misspelled “Laffite” or “La Fitte” — was only a few blocks long, running between Sycamore and Santa Clara streets. Documents on the city’s website, sanantonio.gov, show that it was marked early for destruction. A “Land Acquisition Plan U.R.P. (Urban Renewal Project) III” shows the “Proposed R.O.W. (Right of Way) for an “Interstate Highway” barreling right through Lafitte Street at Sycamore, and a quitclaim deed dated May 19, 1966, declares that the city is giving “certain streets, alleys and unnamed public rights-of-way to the Civic Center Urban Renewal project,” including “LaFitte Street between Water Street and west right-of-way line of the proposed I.H. 37 Expressway.”
If you think of South Alamo Street as the front of the fairgrounds, Lafitte Street would have been in the back … way back. “The house (at 319½ Lafitte), which wasn’t far from Alamo Iron Works (on Hoefgen Street), was still standing on the 1951 Sanborn map” but probably was demolished by the time of HemisFair, says Standifird. “I’m not sure if this block would have ended up under I-37 or under the Texas Pavilion (later the Institute of Texan Cultures).”
The San Antonio Art Glass Co. was at the corner of Blum and Bonham streets, and in
1912, your grandfather and his brother, Horace Slimp, lived at the family home at 1017 S. Mesquite St. According to the 1912 directory, their father, A.B. Slimp, and Chester both worked at the Dixie Oil Co. at 400 E. Commerce — all in plausible walking distance within the same wide area southeast of the center city.
Preserving Playland: The Alamo Colleges District is planning is planning a display on Playland Park — from 19401980, one of the city’s most popular family entertainment destinations — in its new District Support Operations, under construction at 2222 N. Alamo St., the park’s former address. To bring some of the history of the site into the building, the district would welcome donations of Playland memorabilia; send a message to dst-playland@alamo.edu to offer items from the favorite fun spot. Namesake need: For an interpretive marker, historical researchers Maria Pfeiffer and David Haynes are seeking a photograph of the namesake of Farias Park at 1012 Leal St. Mario Farias, who was only 21 when he died in a car accident, had been involved with youth sports in his neighborhood, organizing leagues and tournaments. After his death in 1976, the city of San Antonio, Communities Organized for Public Service and young people at the John Tobin Recreation Center worked together to improve the park and supported naming it in his honor. Anyone who has or knows of photographs of Farias to share may contact this column; all replies will be forwarded.