SAN ANTONIO — A crumbling, 130-year-old home with ties to a pioneering Mexican American family-owned bottling firm has been spared demolition — for now.
Officers with the San Antonio River Authority say the two-story home, a half-block from an uncompleted part of the San Pedro Creek Tradition Park, is harmful, with partitions that might collapse.
However descendants of the Rodriguez-De Leon household see the decaying Victorian construction as a hyperlink to “Laredito” — an outdated neighborhood west of the creek, additionally as soon as generally known as the Mexican Quarter or “Mexican downtown.”
Gina Velasquez has heard numerous tales from her father and his three siblings about their childhood dwelling at 836 S. Laredo St.
“After I shut my eyes, I don’t see a long-forgotten, uncared for stunning piece of historical past,” mentioned Velasquez, 53, who expects the home finally shall be razed. “I see the home because the heartbeat for a household. We at all times like to recollect one of the best when one thing has to go away, in order that’s what I’ll must do.”
On ExpressNews.com: One of many final remnants of ‘Laredito’ deemed unsafe
However for now, the home will stay. The town’s Historic and Design Assessment Fee final week voted 5-2 in opposition to the river authority’s proposal to demolish the circa-1890 A.W. Walter Home.
Pablo Garza, structural engineer with the river authority, instructed the fee the home “seems to be steady, but it surely’s not.” It has lacking mortar, sagging or cascading masonry, cracks and motion in its load-bearing partitions and no less than one inside wall “in peril of collapse.” He has estimated it might price $773,500 to restore and restore the construction.
The home at 836 S. Laredo Avenue seems within the left background of this circa-Nineteen Twenties photograph of the employees at Rodriguez Bottling. A bottling manufacturing unit stood simply behind the home, which is west of San Pedro Creek.
Courtesy Picture / De Leon Household“Very extremely expert artisans must be concerned within the reconstruction of this constructing. Any vibratory motion, any sort of affect, any sort of sudden actions of this constructing may trigger … localized and cascading failure all through the constructing,” Garza mentioned.
However, nearly all of the commissioners mentioned they needed extra proof to help the demolition request, corresponding to engineering estimates that verify there was a lack of historic significance and that rehabilitation can be an financial hardship.
The river authority can attraction the denial to the Zoning Board of Adjustment or return to the fee with a modified demolition request.
SARA acquired the property in 1987 for an underground flood-control tunnel mission, and the Metropolis Council accredited a landmark designation for the home the next 12 months. The property was conveyed in 1992 to town, which returned it to the river authority in 2016 for the Tradition Park mission. Underneath a deed settlement, if the property is ever used for functions unrelated to the Bexar County-funded creek enchancment, the property would revert to town.
“So we’ve got not interpreted this as permitting us to have quite a lot of flexibility to count on any sort of affordable return or any sort of potential partnership for different kinds of issues” not related to the creek, mentioned Xochil Pena Rodriguez, lawyer for SARA.
The river authority proposed razing the home and changing the tract at Laredo and Guadalupe streets to a parking zone for the river authority’s operations and upkeep workers, with inexperienced area buffers. A traditionally designated circa-1850 jacal, generally known as the Bergara-Le Compte Home, at 149 Guadalupe St., would stay in place on the east finish of the lot.
Lucia Rodriguez De Leon operated the Cinderella Magnificence Store from the home at 836 S. Laredo St., the place she raised 4 youngsters as a widow. She lived from 1909 to 1986 and nonetheless owned the home simply west of San Pedro Creek when she died.
Courtesy Picture / De Leon HouseholdCommissioner Ann-Marie Grube, who voted in opposition to the proposal, requested why the Walter Home wasn’t included within the creek mission. Rodriguez mentioned SARA studied prospects for reusing the home or transferring it, however decided it’s too fragile to revive or relocate.
On ExpressNews.com: Outlaw Butch Cassidy visited red-light district in San Antonio’s ‘Laredito ‘
Grube instructed town or SARA may’ve performed extra to save lots of the home.
“Everyone’s simply been handing down this constructing and no person’s put any cash into it,” she mentioned. “I feel there’s choices for this constructing apart from demolish (it).”
Commissioner Curtis Fish voted for demolition, saying, “structural failure within the brick is sort of past an affordable state of rehabilitation and is tantamount to a lack of significance.”
For Velasquez, the home is stuffed with household tales, together with an American success story in Laredito, which was established by the 1800s however nearly solely erased with city renewal and freeway development by the Nineteen Sixties.
Her great-grandfather, Guadalupe Rodriguez Sr., a farmer born in Mexico in 1867, fled Pancho Villa’s revolution in 1912 and got here to San Antonio, beginning a plant that bottled Iron Beer, King-Kola and different common soda drinks of the day.
He purchased the Walter Home in about 1918 and constructed a manufacturing unit behind it. He and his son, Guadalupe Rodriguez Jr., ran Rodriguez Bottling. In a 1922 Spanish-language advert in La Prensa, the corporate touted itself as “unique bottlers of the well-known ‘GRAPICO,’ essentially the most good grape drink out there.
“We sincerely request the patriotism of the nice Mexican colony,” the advert mentioned in Spanish.
This can be a carousel. Use Subsequent and Earlier buttons to navigate
The A.W. Walter Home at 836 S. Laredo St. is proven from the west, with the Rodriguez Bottling manufacturing unit proper behind it, in a circa-Nineteen Twenties photograph.
Courtesy Picture / De Leon Household
“The advert reveals he was already championing for Laredito himself, asking the Mexican group to help Mexican industries,” Velasquez mentioned.
However his son was fatally shot throughout a holdup in 1929. The elder Rodriguez died in 1933, and his widowed daughter-in-law, Herlinda Morales Rodriguez, took over the enterprise, renaming it the Dragon Bottling Co. and changing into one of many first profitable Latina businesswomen of the Southwest. Her legacy as a freight logistics pioneer earned her a web page on the Handbook of Texas On-line.
By 1939, Dragon Bottling was probably the most affluent companies owned by a Mexican American within the state, producing 120 instances of sentimental drinks in 12 completely different flavors per hour and utilizing 12 vehicles to ship them inside a 160-mile radius of San Antonio, in keeping with the net historical past database. However by the Nineteen Sixties, small bottlers had shut down amid competitors from main distributors corresponding to Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
On ExpressNews.com: Residence of pioneering Texan Navarro reopens in downtown San Antonio
Velasquez mentioned her grandmother, Lucia Rodriguez De Leon, lived in the home, the place she ran the Cinderella Magnificence Store and raised 4 youngsters as a widow. When she died in 1986, she had moved however nonetheless owned the home.
Members of the family have mentioned the home was haunted, claiming a chair left on the prime of the L-shaped stairway would at all times come tumbling down, as if pushed by some spectral pressure.
“My grandmother instructed me her eldest son as a child can be crying upstairs,” Velasquez mentioned. “He can be quieted by the point she acquired up there and the cradle can be rocking.”
On a extra earthly airplane, there have been the tales from her father, uncle and two aunts about Laredito: a playground in entrance of their home; a close-by bakery that was a magnet for kids within the space; the nightlife they noticed from their porch, together with fights at close by bars spilling into the road; and the row homes throughout the road the place different households lived.
Although resigned to the probability of demolition, Velasquez needs one factor for the home: “I wish to give it a good burial.”
shuddleston@express-news.internet
