As a nineteenth-century travel writer, Frederick Law Olmsted had produced a readable, straightforward description of San Antonio and its tri-cultural inhabitants during the mid-1850's, but Sydney Lanier was the first writer of belletristic importance, especially in the Southern tradition, to describe the city from a more literary perspective. The accomplished Georgia flautist and poet came to San Antonio at the end of 1872, hoping to improve his tubercular condition, the town being, in Lanier's words, "a growing resort for consumptives" (Lanier 202). While here, he wrote a rambling essay based on his visit titled "San Antonio de Bexar," which was published in the July-August 1873 issue of the Southern Magazine. Even though the bulk of the essay is a historical sketch of San Antonio during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, borrowed mostly from H. Yoakum's History of Texas and a few other sources, Lanier took a genuine interest in the city's cultural diversity, its natural and architectural landmarks, and even its climate and topography.

San Antonio must have struck Lanier as a rather exotic place, as it had Olmsted, for he immediately observed:

One finds in San Antonio the queerest juxtaposition of civilizations, white, yellow (Mexican), red (Indian), black (negro), and all possible permutations of these significant colors. The Germans, the Americans, and the Mexicans are not greatly unequal in numbers. (233)

He was careful to point out, however, that religious services were held in four languages (English, Spanish, German, and Polish) and then added,

In all the large stores the clerks must understand at least English, German, and Mexican; and one medical gentleman adds to his professional card . . . that he will hold "consultations in English, French, Italian, and Spanish" (235). Even the ruin of one of the five missions, Concepcion, was occupied at this time by a German family.

Lanier was particularly fascinated by the trilingual sign-board 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)

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.

Concerning San Antonio's architectural landmarks, Lanier had little to say descriptively about the city's most famous one, the Alamo. This omission is not really surprising, however, considering the Alamo's condition then. While the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers had already "taco-belled" the old ruin (as one historian put it) by 1850, the structure was being used as a supply depot until Fort Sam Houston was built at its present location in 1876. Instead Lanier was more impressed with San Fernando Cathedral, constructed in the eighteenth century for the Canary Island immigrants, and he described it in some detail:

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 in 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 most 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. (241)

Two views of Southwest School of Art and Craft, formerly the Ursuline Convent

Mission San Juan Capistrano

In addition, Lanier was favorably impressed by the Ursuline Convent, located just north of downtown, "standing as it does on a rocky and steep . . . bank of the [San Antonio] river":

Strolling up the river a quarter of a mile, one comes upon a lone white stone building which has evidently had much trouble to accommodate itself to the site upon which it is built, and whose line is broken into four or five abrupt angles, while its roof is varied with dormer- windows and sharp projections and spires and quaint clock-faces, and its rear is mysterious with lattice-covered balconies and half-hidden corridors. (242)

He also liked Mission Concepción, which was occupied by a German family at that time, and especially Mission San José de Aguayo, located further southeast of downtown. Lanier noted that religious services were still being regularly conducted at Mission San José, and he romantically reflected

In addition to the local architecture and inhabitants, Lanier was also interested in the two major streams that flowed through what is now the inner city area of San Antonio. Of these two the San Antonio River, with its famous River Walk, has subsequently become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Texas, but even in 1873 the stream had its picturesque appeal. Lanier described it as a small river about sixty feet wide:

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)

The nostalgic Southern poet grew even more eloquent in describing the river's source and the major bridge across the river:

The other stream that caught Lanier's interest, San Pedro Creek, is practically unknown to the general populace, although Olmsted had given it adequate notice back in the mid-1850's. Lanier described its origin from a spring, located two or three miles north of downtown, but once the small stream exits the area it becomes little more than a drainage ditch, which the city has covered with concrete. Of course, that was not the case during Lanier's visit, for he described the section of the creek near Military Plaza located downtown as the local peasant laundry:

There squat the Mexican women on their haunches, by their flat stones, washing the family garments, in a position the very recollection of which gives one simultaneous stitches of lumbago and sciatica, yet which they appear to maintain for hours without detriment.(240)

Concerning the location north of downtown--now called San Pedro Park--where the San Pedro Creek originates from its "crystalline springs" (243), Lanier included several interesting comments near the end of his lengthy essay on San Antonio. King Philip of Spain had set aside the area around the springs in 1729 as a "public place" (Richelieu n.p.), making San Pedro (Springs) Park the second oldest municipal park in the nation after the Boston Common (1660). A century and a half later, by 1873, it had become (and still is) a popular place for outdoor recreation.