San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Finesilver estate fades as S.A. grows northward
In the 1970s, when I was in high school, I gave a friend a ride home after school. We went to the corner of Babcock and Crestline, and there was a long driveway with a huge house on a hill. He said his father worked as a gardener for the Finesilvers. I also remembering seeing cattle on the other side of the house. The area is or was the Koger Center, I believe. Was this the Finesilvers’ house and property?
This is one of those stories every native or longtime San Antonian has about a place that used to be “way out in the country” and has since been completely transformed by growth and development.
The property you remember was originally owned by Sophie and Abraham Finesilver (spelled “Fiensilber” on some documents through the 1920s). In the 1929 San Antonio city directory, the couple’s residence was listed as “ss Babcock rd 2 w Fredericksburg rd,” meaning their home was on the south side of Babcock Road, 2 miles west of Fredericksburg Road, the nearest recognizable thoroughfare.
Various Finesilver family houses built at this location went without a street number into the 1950s. “It was Babcock Road, no number,” said a family member familiar with the property that ran to “hundreds of acres” before the city’s progress began to encroach. Later, it was assigned street number 1550 and finally 1400 Babcock
Road.
Literally “out where the buses don’t run,” the area wasn’t served by public transportation, trash collection or city water lines. There was a gravel road, an artesian well and dairy cattle; and at least one of the couple’s seven children remembered riding a horse to school.
Born in 1869 in Russia, Abraham Finesilver may have had a special appreciation for owning land. He was the founder of Finesilver Overall Co., later Finesilver Manufacturing, makers of work clothes and uniforms. From 1897, the company’s factory and warehouse was in what’s now known as the Finesilver Building, near the juncture of interstates 10 and 35 – a long commute, then as now.
His five daughters all married and had their own homes with their husbands.
Sons Hertzel (1911-1991) and Mervin (1909-1988) joined their father in the family business and built houses on the family property after each married during the 1930s. Those two houses were on a hill, reached by a curving driveway, through grounds landscaped with trees and flowers.
Mervin’s, built of pink brick, was on the left and was probably the one you remember; while his brother Hertzel’s house, across the driveway from it, was made of light Austin stone. Mervin’s house had some smaller servants’ quarters in the back; that may be where your school friend lived.
The one-story, modernstyle houses had large rooms and were expanded a few times with additions and conversions. “A patio became a den, the kitchen was made bigger, bathrooms were added,” said the family member. “The property was huge, but the houses weren’t.”
This isolated, pastoral space changed with the construction of Loop 410 in the late 1950s. Part of the Finesilver property was taken by eminent domain to build the road that connected interstate highways and the city’s military installations. The area became commercial, said the Finesilver family member, who recalled the living room in one of the houses had a beautiful view of the downtown lights at night.
After the completion of Loop 410, more changes came. The brothers sold some of the land in the back of their property for development into the Koger Center, an office complex now known as the Brass Professional Center.
After the deaths of both brothers, the rest of the land was sold, said the family member; the hill was leveled; trees were cut down; and a “massive parking lot was built” where the approach to the Finesilver property had been.
Downtown, the family clothing plant also was changing. In the mid-1980s, with the brothers looking toward retirement, the Finesilver company switched from manufacturing to distribution. The ramp for an interchange between I-10 and I-35 was built in the early 1990s that saved the historic industrial building but sent a stream of traffic past its front door. The plant closed in 1993, before the ramp known as the Finesilver Curve opened.
The pleasing name of this prominent family lives on in some ventures not directly connected to any of them. In the mid-1990s, the former factory was redeveloped as the Finesilver Building for office, restaurant and retail tenants, including the Finesilver Gallery for contemporary art. A Finesilver Ranch subdivision was developed in the late 1990s.
CONTINUING CARE: A local agency is seeking descendants of the founders of its ancestor institution. In 1886, 13 women met in San Antonio to establish the Home for Destitute Children, later renamed the Protestant Home for Destitute Children. After successive changes in name, focus and location, the home has morphed into Clarity Child Guidance Center — a nonprofit facility in the South Texas Medical Center providing mental health care for children and adolescents. The center is looking for descendants of the founders of the original institution so they can be invited to its 135th birthday celebrations in June. They were (in the style of their time): Mrs. Mary A. Maverick, Mrs. A.J. Dignowity, Mrs. Kate W. Norton, Mrs. D. N. Bash, Mrs. U. Lott, Mrs. A. J. Fry, Miss Lucy Cable,
Mrs. Ed R. Norton, Mrs. George S. Chabot, Mrs. C. C. Cresson, Mrs. F. L. Talcott, Mrs. H. D. Kampmann, Mrs. I. P. Simpson and Miss Mary Lamb. Descendants are asked to contact Chandler Mantiply at claritycgc.org or 210-5932148.