Main Plaza and Military Plaza

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Literary San Antonio Main Plaza and Military Plaza
Early twentieth-century view of Main Plaza, featuring San Fernando Cathedral and original Frost Bank Building (San Antonio Express-News file photo)	In addition to Alamo Plaza, downtown San Antonio contains two other plazas that date all the way back to the early eighteenth century, when the Canary Island immigrants arrived from Spain. These adjoining plazas on the western side of downtown are called Main Plaza (Plaza de las Islas) and Military Plaza (Plaza de Armas).
	Main Plaza: Founded as Villa de San Fernando in 1731 by Spanish colonists from the Canary Islands, the Main Plaza area was the first civilian municipality in Texas. The San Fernando church doors on the west side of the plaza were the geographic center, and even today city street numbers and directions start at the next corner. James Bowie married Ursula Veremendi, daughter of the Vice-Governor of Texas, in San Fernando Cathedral. Santa Anna camped on Main Plaza during the Alamo seige. When Col. Robert E. Lee was confronted outside his Main Plaza hotel and rejected secession, he was run out of town without his personal possessions (Richelieu n.p).
Present-day façade of San Fernando Cathedral	As the oldest continuously operating parish church in Texas and the nation's oldest cathedral sanctuary, San Fernando Cathedral was founded in 1731 by Canary Islanders. Nevertheless, Frederick Olmsted showed little enthusiasm for it in 1854, describing it as a "dirty, grim, old, stuccoed stone cathedral, whose cracked bell is now clunking the vespers, in a tone that bids us no welcome" (150).
Rear view of San Fernando Cathedral, with former Frost Bank Building to the left	Between 1854 and 1873 improvements were made to the structure, which elicited a more positive description from Sydney Lanier: By far the finest and largest architectural example in town is San Fernando Cathedral, which presents a broad, varied, and imposing façade upon the western side of Main Plaza. Entering this building, one's pleasure in its exterior gives way to curious surprise; for one finds inside the old stone church built here more than a century ago, standing, a church within a church, almost untouched save that parts of some projecting pediments have been knocked away by the builders. In this inner church services are still regularly held, the outer one not being yet completed. The curious dome, surrounded by a high wall over which its slit-windows just peer--an evident relic of ancient Moorish architecture, which one finds in the rear of the old Spanish edifices in Texas-- has been preserved, and still adjoins the queer priests' dormitories, which constitute the rear end of the cathedral building. ("San Antonio de Bexar," 241)
Former Frost Bank Building, located on northwest corner of Main Plaza	Much later, in 1938, when Graham Greene arrived in San Antonio, as a Catholic he attended mass "in the Catholic cathedral" (San Fernando). The homily was preached in Spanish, while electric fans revolved above statues representing in their pale colours and plaster poses the most noble and fragile sentiments. As for the congregation, they were like pictures in early Victorian albums: the black mantillas and the small vivid pointed faces might have come out of Lady Blessington's Book of Beauty. (Another Mexico, 18)
Frost Bank historical plaque on front of building	Located immediately north of San Fernando Cathedral on the same side of Main Plaza is another structure of literary interest, the former Frost Bank Building. Presently the City Council uses the ground floor as a venue for public meetings, but when Robert Frost came to San Antonio in 1936, the building housed the Frost National Bank, and the façade retains a plaque commemorating the Frost family's founding of the city's oldest financial institution. In a letter to Louis Untermeyer, Robert Frost's long-time friend and supporter, Elinor Frost observed, "My little grandson can claim rather near relationship to the Robert Frost represented in your book and only somewhat distant relationship, I fear, to the Frosts of the Frost National Bank of this city (check enclosed)." At first Untermeyer dismissed Mrs. Frost's comment as a pun on the name "First National Bank," but a day or two later he received a one-sentence note which read, "This is the check negligently omitted from yesterday's letter. R." (Untermeyer 286-87).
Restored façade of Spanish Governor's Palace, located on northwestern corner of Military Plaza	MILITARY PLAZA: The structure of major historical and literary interest on the Military Plaza (Plaza de Armas) is the Spanish Governor's Palace, a rather generous term applied to a restored one-story building located on the west side of the plaza. The residence was completed in 1749 to house the commanding officer of the Spanish military garrison, and the surviving capstone in the doorway has that date etched into it.
Capstone above front entrance Portrait of Marques de Valero hanging in Spanish Governor's Palace Tile Portrait of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, located in courtyard of McNay Art Museum	The literary point of interest here is based on the fact that the interior of the Spanish Governor's Palace contains two early portraits of Don Baltazar de Zuniga, Marques de Valero, who was born in Bejar, Spain, in 1659 and died in Madrid in 1727. During the early eighteenth century he served as Viceroy of Mexico and is credited with founding San Antonio de Bexar in 1718. He may have used the name "Bexar," or "Bejar," in memory of his brother, the Duke of Bejar, who had recently died fighting against the Turks to defend Budapest (Allen 12). Coincidentally, Miguel de Cervantes had dedicated Part One of Don Quixote (1605) to an earlier member of this same aristocratic Spanish family, Don Alonso de Zuniga y Sotomayor. The Dedication reads in part as follows: To the Duke of Bejar Marquis of Gibraleon, Count of Benalcazar and Banares, Viscount of La Puebla de Alcocer, Lord of the Towns of Capilla, Curiel, and Burguillos Confident of the courteous reception and honors that Your Excellency bestows on all sorts of books, as a prince so inclined to favor the arts, chiefly those which by their nobility do not submit to the service and bribery of the vulgar, I have decided to publish The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de La Mancha in the shelter of Your Excellency's most illustrious name. (8)
Nineteenth-century painting of Military Plaza, showing rear view of San Fernando Cathedral (Witte Museum) Early photo of old Ursuline Convent (DRT Library) Image credit: Lone Star Junction	In the early twentieth century, O. Henry made a more directly literary use of the Military Plaza, but in an entirely un-aristocratic manner. In one of his San Antonio based stories titled "The Enchanted Kiss," he used the plaza as the setting of the story's climax, even though his narrator curiously disclaims its significance as "an ancient disused plaza"(Collected Stories 1:483), in contrast to the more famous Alamo Plaza. Yet it is the Military Plaza where the gothic elements of the plot become even more bizarre when the reader learns that the villain, Ramon Torres, is exactly 403 years old, had come to Mexico with Cortes in 1519 [sic] at the age of twenty-three, had come to "thees country" in 1715, had seen the Alamo "reduced," and has maintained his longevity, as he explains to the protagonist Tansey by devouring "the flesh young and tender. That ees the secret. Everee month you must eat it, having care to do so before the moon is full, and you will not die any time" (485). Of course, the specific young virgin to be cannibalized is none other than Katie Peek, whose outrageous father has sold her to Torres for one thousand dollars and whose desperate screams bring Tansey to her rescue. In the ensuing struggle the 403-year-old Torres transforms into a screaming mummy and conveniently dies, not because of Tansey's heroics but because Torres' aged hag of a wife has tricked him-out of jealousy and spite-into waiting one night too long to prepare his human chile con carne. She also manages to plunge a dagger into the back of the astonished Tansey, whose next sensation is to wake up from this Military Plaza nightmare to find himself on the limestone steps of the convent of Santa Mercedes (in reality the old Ursuline Convent), where he had earlier reclined to sober up-and to dream.