Commerce St. Bridge and the San Antonio River

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Literary San Antonio Commerce Street Bridge and the San Antonio River
Commerce Street Bridge from the river level	Next to the Alamo, San Antonio’s most famous attraction is the San Antonio River, which winds its way through the downtown area with the help of some manmade channels. Of the numerous bridges which cross its narrow banks, the most celebrated of all is the Commerce Street Bridge, which crosses it in the vicinity of Losoya and Alamo Streets. It should come as no surprise that both the River and the Bridge have received ample attention from literary celebrities throughout the years.
An early twentieth-century view of the bridge(San Antonio Express-News)	FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED: As Frederick Law Olmsted rode into the outskirts of San Antonio in 1854, he seemed unimpressed by the “limitless grass and thorny bushes,” but by the time he reached the Commerce Street Bridge located near the middle of downtown, he became more expansive--and eloquent--in his description: We descend to the bridge, which is close down upon the water, as the river, owing to its particular source, never varies in height or temperature. We irresistibly stop to examine it, we are so struck with its beauty. It is of a rich blue and as clear as a crystal, flowing rapidly but noiselessly over the pebbles and between reedy banks. One could lean for hours over the bridge-rail. (148-49)
Commerce Street Bridge plaque	SYDNEY LANIER: In “San Antonio de Bexar” (1873) Sydney Lanier expressed his fascination with the trilingual signboard posted at the Commerce Street Bridge, because it apparently summed up for him the nature of the three prominent ethnic groups in the specific wording of the sign, which read: Walk your horse over the bridge, or you will be fined. Schnelles Reiten uber diese Brucke ist verboten. Anda despacio con su caballo, o teme la ley. (234)
Early photo of Commerce Street Bridge	From Lanier’s perspective as a nineteenth-century Southern writer, the Anglo-American’s concern is money, so he is threatened with a fine, while for the “law-abiding Teuton” (234) it is enough to know that riding one’s horse across the bridge is forbidden. In contrast, the Spanish speaker’s injunction is fear of the law, a more negative implication suggesting the fear of being punished, perhaps implying Lanier’s prejudicial attitude toward the Hispanic population. In a later passage from “San Antonio de Bexar” Lanier reflected more nostalgically on the popular river crossing: One may take one’s stand on the Commerce Street Bridge and involve oneself in the life that goes by this way and that. Yonder comes a long train of enormous blue-bodied, canvas-covered wagons, built high and square in the stern, much like a fleet of Dutch galleons, and lumbering in a pondering way that suggests cargoes of silver and gold. (244)
San Antonio River, viewed from Commerce Street Bridge	The San Antonio River, with its famous River Walk, has become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Texas, but even in 1873 the stream had its picturesque appeal. Lanier made this point clear in his description of the River: Its water is usually of a lovely milky-green. The stranger strolling on a mild summer day often finds himself suddenly on a bridge, and is half startled with the winding vista of sweet lawns running down to the water, of the weeping-willows kissing the surface, of summer-houses on its banks, and of the swift yet smooth-shining stream meandering this way and that. (240)
Augusta Street Bridge, one of the few remaining iron bridges from the time of O. Henry's visit Augusta St. Bridge, repainted	O. HENRY : In O. Henry’s short story “A Fog in Santone” (1912) a suicidal tuberculosis patient named Goodall buys a packet of morphine grains from a druggist. After completing his purchase, Goodall wanders out into the late-night fog and pauses upon “a little iron bridge, one of a score or more in the heart of the city, under which the small tortuous river flows” (Rolling Stones 101). The winding doubling streets, leading nowhere, bewildered him. And there was a little river, crooked as a pot-hook, that crawled through the middle of the town, crossed by a hundred little bridges so nearly alike that they got on Curly’s nerves. (Complete Works, 1:174)
	GRAHAM GREENE: Like several other literary visitors to San Antonio, Graham Greene encountered the San Antonio River when he passed through San Antonio in 1938, and he described it in Another Mexico (The Lawless Roads) as being “wound cunningly through the town like a pattern on a valentine (does it make a heart?) with little waterfalls and ferny banks” (18). For Greene it seemed to circumscribe an Edenic refuge that excluded the world of reality. “Where,” he asked, “loitering on a bridge above the little tamed river, was there any sign of that ‘terrible original calamity’ which [Cardinal] Newman perceived everywhere? This--during the day--was the perfect ivory tower” (18).
Two more views of the San Antonio River, much as Greene and Gunther described it	JOHN GUNTHER: John Gunther’s monumental description of the American scene, Inside U.S.A (1947), pays special homage to San Antonio and its river: San Antonio . . . is, next to San Francisco, New Orleans, and possibly Boston, the most colorful, the most ’romantic’city in America. . . . Winding through its heart is a stream, terraced and banked with green, seemingly below the level of the city proper, like an iridescent trench; you slip along in a Venetian gondola that brushes against the roots of concrete skyscrapers. The gulf wind makes the nights cool, even in midsummer, and flickering behind a web of branches are a thousand fireflies. . . . But along the river banks Mexican girls (in American slacks) flirt vividly, and boys wade in the waterfall for pennies, and underneath every culvert, at each stage and boat stand, are the lovemakers.(832)
Tower of the Americas, viewed from extension of San Antonio River constructed for Hemisfair(1968)	LARRY MCMURTRY: By the time Larry McMurtry arrived on the banks of the San Antonio River at the eve of the 1968 Hemisfair, the place had not lost its appealing ambience, as he points out in a passage from In a Narrow Grave: By nine the next morning I was in San Antonio, the one truly lovely city in the state. . . . I walked by the San Antonio River awhile and had breakfast at a cafe by the waterside, only a few blocks from the Alamo and over to the little square where sometimes the friendly old bums of O. Henry still gather on winter mornings to take the sun. (83)