’60s lunch counters may get exhibit
Supporters of historic Woolworth Building still want it preserved
A replica of a 1960s lunch counter and a new civil rights institute in the historic Kress Building on Houston Street might be ready by next summer, but advocates say it won’t take the place of protecting the Woolworth Building on Alamo Plaza two blocks away.
City Councilman Roberto Treviño, who is on the Alamo management committee leading the $450 million overhaul of Alamo Plaza, says he can’t guarantee that the Woolworth won’t be demolished as part of the remake. Preserving the building, even as a facade, might not be feasible, he said.
“That is incredibly complex, and so it requires complex study and of course a pretty complex answer,” the councilman said.
Treviño said he’s working with Trinity University and other community partners to create the new institute and an exhibit that tells the story of the seven downtown lunch counters that peacefully desegregated in 1960 — including those in the Woolworth and Kress buildings — briefly putting San Antonio in a national spotlight during the civil rights movement.
The Conservation Society of San Antonio said it applauds plans for the institute but wants the local story of lunch counter integration well interpreted at the Alamo, not just the Kress Building.
“It is another chapter in the struggle for freedom that should not be segregated from one of the major sites where it took place,” said Patti Zaiontz, president of the society, referring to the Woolworth Building.
The initiative to build the lunch counter and open a center dedicated to civil rights history is an effort to ease the concerns of advocates of the 20th-century facet of history at the site of the Battle of the Alamo, but many of the Woolworth supporters are having none of it.
East Side activist Nettie Hinton, who has teamed up with the society and others to form the local Woolworth Building Coalition, said the location of the Woolworth Building, where people would
stand at Alamo and Houston to catch the bus from downtown to the East Side, has more personal significance with the African-American community than the Kress Building. “It shouldn’t be at the Kress Building. It should be at the Woolworth,” Hinton said of plans for a downtown lunch counter interpretation.
The concept of a civil rights institute surfaced amid a debate over the 1921 Woolworth Building in Alamo Plaza. The building is one of three state-owned structures that could be at least partially demolished for a new Alamo museum, to open in 2024 as the centerpiece of the $450 million makeover of the plaza.
Work on the Alamo project’s first phase, to include repair and relocation of the 1930s Cenotaph and renovation of the south end of the plaza, is set to begin soon, starting with closure of portions of Bonham and Crockett as early as January.
Preservationists have argued that the existing facade of the Woolworth Building, which housed one of the seven lunch counters that integrated in 1960, should be incorporated into the new museum’s design. Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and the Alamo’s former on-site historian, Bruce Winders, also have sounded a call to keep the building’s facade intact.
Because the new museum is still under design, and officials are negotiating property acquisitions that could affect the design, Treviño, an architect, said he can’t say that the Woolworth Building won’t be demolished. “Nothing has been decided,” he said.
Alamo CEO Douglass W. McDonald recommended hiring Trinity University history professor Carey Latimore last year to perform a study to determine the cultural significance of the Woolworth Building. That study, completed but not released, will be presented in January to the Alamo project management committee. It includes details of the seven lunch counters that desegregated March 16, 1960, amid threats of demonstrations by the NAACP.
“The amazing thing is this is really a Houston Street story because six of the lunch counters were on Houston Street,” Treviño said. “It would be a huge disservice to only acknowledge the Woolworth lunch counter.”
The 1938 Kress Building at 311 E. Houston St. housed another of those lunch counters. The six-story structure has undergone exterior and interior renovations in recent years, and it now houses the Texas de Brazil restaurant on its ground floor.
Zaiontz said San Antonio’s 1960 response to the sit-in movement at lunch counters nationwide was unique because “all the stores agreed to integrate at the same time so that none would be called out as the first.”
“The first news reports on Wednesday, March 16, 1960, focused on the Kress Building because reporters found black and white customers being served there,” she said.
GrayStreet Partners, which is renovating the Kress Building, has offered to provide 5,000 square feet “in the very spot where history happened” rent free for 10 years to serve as a place for learning, research and lectures, Treviño said.
He envisions use of the city’s Houston Street tourism funds and a partnership with nonprofit Centro San Antonio to finance public art components.
Because of a mislabeled photograph in the Institute of Texan Cultures Collection and a long-told urban myth that the Woolworth lunch counter was the first in the South to desegregate, the history of the Woolworth has often been misunderstood, experts say.
The linear-shaped Kress counter has sometimes been misidentified as the Woolworth counter, which had a serpentine configuration, Treviño said.
“We’ve got pictures of the Kress and pictures that everybody’s showing as the Woolworth, and they match, down to the paintings on the wall. We’ve even got the blueprints. So we can actually reconstruct the lunch counter,” he said.
But Hinton said the Woolworth Building also has a history seared in the memory of those who used to eat fluffy, sugar-glazed doughnuts from a bakery display facing its Houston Street storefront while waiting to take the bus home.
The Woolworth Building Coalition is planning a commemorative event next month to highlight the structure’s visceral ties to longtime San Antonians.
“That’s one of the warm memories,” said Hinton, 80.
Treviño said the new institute, which could be fully established by June, would be separate from the Alamo project but would advise the project on interpretation of the Woolworth site.
“I’ve also secured an agreement that the Alamo museum will consult with this institute about its Woolworth history,” Treviño said. “The museum that’s committed to telling unvarnished stories and a factual history will be getting that from an institute that is committed to that.”
Zaiontz said the Conservation Society has questions about Latimore’s report, particularly portions that seem to marginalize the importance of the Woolworth lunch counter.
“We are anxious to see how Dr. Latimore’s report parses this evidence and reveals more details about that historic day. Especially since primary evidence indicates that both Woolworth and Kress became the primary targets of the early sitin movement,” she said.
“We know of no reason why there needs to be a forced choice to ‘pay tribute’ to the Woolworth Building at another site,” Zaiontz said. “Civil rights tourism is a growing industry. The Alamo should not leave this money on the table or divert it two blocks away.”
“Finally, we agree with Dr. Winders,” she added. “San Antonio is already a great city. An improved Alamo with a new museum interpreting the full 300 years of Alamo history, through reuse of its landmark buildings, will elevate this site. We look forward to seeing how the new museum and institute will interpret the 180 years of Alamo history after 1840.”