Restoring beauty of Miraflores
Symposium will examine future of historic garden
More than 100 years ago, prominent surgeon Aureliano Urrutia arrived in San Antonio after being exiled during the Mexican Revolution. Soon after settling on Broadway Street just north of downtown, he began work on Miraflores — one of the city’s most historic and artistic exhibits of Mexican culture and beauty.
Miraflores — a garden lined with commissioned sculptures, intricate tiles and flowering plants natural to Mexico — is a reminder of San Antonio’s Mexican heritage.
But today, it’s a shell of its past, and some have taken up its cause.
Scholars, conservationists and the city will host a symposium called “Miraflores at 100 — del pasado al futuro” from 8:30 a.m. to noon Saturday at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. The event will examine the garden’s complicated history, what Miraflores means to the modern day San Antonio and what the future may hold for Urrutia’s masterpiece.
The symposium will feature four speakers: Elise Urrutia, great-granddaughter of Dr. Urrutia and author of “Miraflores: San Antonio’s Mexican Garden of Memory,” due out in March 2022; landscape architect John Troy; Trinity University Professor Jennifer Mathews, who chairs the university’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology; and John Phillip Santos, a distinguished
scholar in Mestizo cultural studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. They will be followed by a panel discussion with Lynn Bobbitt, executive director of the Brackenridge Park Conservancy; Donna Guerra, director of archives for the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word; and Bill Pennell, an assistant manager of park planning with the city of San Antonio.
The symposium was conceived by Elise Urrutia and Trinity University Professor Kathryn O’rourke, who will moderate the panel discussion, to look back at Urrutia’s history and Miraflores’ impact in San Antonio.
For Elise Urrutia, the garden is a gift to San Antonio and an expression of Mexican cultural heritage. For years, she has strived to further understand how it represents San Antonio and why its memory is important.
“It belongs to San Antonio,” she said of what her great-grandfather built. “It literally is a creative artistic expression. And just like you look at a work of art and try to discern what the artist’s intentions were, you look at this garden and you see that his intentions were quite elaborate. The garden is a metaphor for the Mexico he knew and loved, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Past and present
Urrutia began building Miraflores in 1921, the year his first wife died. He bought 15 acres, running from Broadway Street and Hildebrand Avenue to the San Antonio River. And for the next few decades, he built out the 5 acres along the river into his garden, crafting roaming paths and deeply wooded areas, and working with sculptors and other artists.
In 1953, he sold 10 acres to USAA, and in 1962, when he was 88, he sold the 5-acre garden to USAA as well.
Over time, the garden fell into disrepair, Elise Urrutia said. Tons of infill dirt was brought in, causing the land’s slope to change. Sculptures were knocked over, broken, buried, removed or destroyed.
“Anything that could have happened to the garden, happened,” she said. “We are lucky to have anything left of it today.”
Later, the garden was sold to Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., then to the University of the Incarnate Word. The city of San Antonio acquired it in 2007.
Since then, city officials have tried to restore the garden, said Matthews, a professor of anthropology at Trinity who will speak at the symposium about three garden sculptures.
Most recently, the city recovered bricks that were in place when the garden was created around a central fountain with a statue of Aureliano Urrutia. The fountain is being reconstructed with materials left behind, and a pathway is being installed around it.
“I applaud them for what they’re doing so far,” Matthews said. “The more that people in this city can get engaged and involved as stakeholders for this process, the more we’re going to see donations and fundraising for preservation. I would love to see this made into a public space that people can use and enjoy.”
Elise Urrutia believes that while there’s a lot of work to do, people must first understand what the garden was.
“That’s how we can get to a restoration that will reflect the cultural heritage of the man who made it,” she said. “And in turn, it will connect with the Hispanic cultural heritage in San Antonio.”