The Briscoe Museum: A New Use For an Old Building (with some additions)

                       PART 1: The San Antonio Public Library (1930-1967)

San Antonio Public Library c.1930

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I've already mentioned the history of the buffalo nickel frieze inside the Briscoe Museum. The present-day building has a long history, and now is one element of a three-part museum with a modern exhibition space and event center, and a sculpture garden.  But the main structure that houses its permanent galleries has had two previous lives, first as San Antonio's second public library, and then as a circus museum.

Prior to this, the site had several uses, and I am providing links below for that earlier history and the politics and process about how it finally became the Briscoe. Here, I'd like to talk about the main building itself.  Its location, at the corner of Market and Presa Streets, just off the San Antonio River, had already housed a Carnegie Library opened in 1903, on land donated to the city by Caroline and John Kampmann specifically as a site for a municipal public library.  This elegant neo-Roman building, typical of Carnegie libraries around the United States, outgrew its space within two decades, and a flood downtown critically damaged it in 1921.  By 1928, architect Herbert S. Green was awarded a contract, first to remodel the old building, and subsequently to design a completely new on to replace it.  It was opened with a lot of fanfare in August 1930.

              

Library Main Entrance with Allegories

Green conceived of the building in the then-popular art deco style with clean geometric lines. The tall three- story facade was flanked by two single story wings.  Behind this the structure rose to the height of the facade; and contained the heart of the library, its book stacks. To the rear were two lower wings that matched in size those in front, also holding stacks.. The restrained decorations on its exterior echoed the refined purpose of the library with some literary mottoes thought appropriate by white masculine thinkers of the early 20th century. Over the Presa Street entrance surrounded with classical decorative motifs, a quote by the now-forgotten poet William Ellery Channing: "In The Best Books Great Men Talk To Us.  Give Us Their Most Precious Thoughts, And Pour Their Souls Into Ours." On the building's opposite side is one by James A. Garfield: "Next In Importance To Freedom And Justice Is Popular Education, Without Which Neither Freedom Nor Justice Can Be Permanently Maintained."  This one, surmounted by a frieze of a book within a rayed ring flanked by two Bison, seems ironic in the light of present-day book banning by our Texas legislature.

               

The inscription over the main entrance features the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson between two lions and two opened books: "Books Are The Homes of American People."  This doorway is recessed into a coffered niche that rises nearly the height of the facade, Higher up over the main doorway is a frieze of five venerable buildings which were considered important for for San Antonians: the Parthenon, the Alamo (the completed facade of 1849), Mission Concepción, the U.S. Capitol, the old court of King's College, Cambridge (supposedly the first public library in the world), and the Lincoln Memorial. Finally, flanking the arched portal to either side, near the top of the facade are two busts, to the left, Cervantes and to the right, Shakespeare. These figures represented two of the foremost figures of the European author's canon--Cervantes, perhaps because of the first Hispanic Europeans to settle San Antonio, the Canary Islanders, and Shakespeare for the city's subsequent Anglo-Saxon occupants?

The rest of the exterior decoration was sparing: a frieze of garlands along the upper story, and a couple of footed stands with urns on them on either side of the doorway. On the recessed wall by the Presa Street doorway was a plaque with the Gettysburg Address on it--a survivor of the library's Carnegie predecessor. The exterior was thus a cultured manifestation of the building's noble purpose--indeed the August 3, 1930 issue of the San Antonio Light called it "[An] Elaborate Monument to Literature."

Library Lobby

This dignified decor was continued in the library's impressive two-story lobby--an art-deco-neoclassic fusion. At its top, a gilded plaster ceiling of neoclassic coffering, with a frieze below it containing those buffalo nickel faces.  On three sides, the walls are divided into two decorative stories, the upper painted a dark green, the lower covered by wood paneling with a palmette frieze at its top.  Tying the two levels together are flat green pilasters, with gilded flattened

Library, Catalogues

capitals with geometric marking.  The wood paneled lower portion is divided on its fourth side (facing the entrance) by a wooden-railed balcony which forms a mezzanine; this creates a lower-ceilinged recess under it, which stretches beyond the lobby to the two side entrances.  The mezzanine was reached by a staircase with its risers covered in cowhide.  The staircase continued to a third floor that contained offices.

         

In addition, to the left and the right of the lobby was a reading room to the left and a room dedicated to children on the right (this room's function was later changed and the children's section was relocated to the basement).  The main entry to the library
was flanked by glass windows and pilasters of polished stone.

Library Reading Room

This was what you, in the citizen-borrower part of the building would see and use.  The greater, taller bulk of the building behind this contained six low-ceiling floors of stacks, which housed the
books--the heart of any library.  In 1930, the library operated on a closed stack system: except for some popular books on shelves in the reading room, and a limited access to some first-floor stacks off the same room, prospective readers and borrowers would select their choices from a card catalogue located along the lobby's back wall.  Once submitted, employees called runners would fetch the books from their designated place in the stacks. Everything was classified under a number code called the Dewey Decimal System, as it still is today in public libraries.  Back in the day every book had a corresponding typewritten catalogue card with author, title, and call number.  After the client received the book, they would go to the check-out desk located to the left front of the library.

           

At some point, the rather dimly lit lobby with its wall sconces and its art deco pendant lighting proved impractical for card catalogue scanning and book checkout space, and so drop fluorescent light fixtures were installed, partially obscuring the original coffered decorations above them. Wall air conditioners were also mounted into the windows flanking the main entrance.

Library with Air Conditioning units and fluorescent  lights

                 

The library proved successful and popular.  Soon satellite branches popped up around the city, but this original building was its hub--until the collection and demand outgrew it in 1967, when it was moved. But just over a decade after its founding, changes were afoot.

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All black and white photos courtesy of San Antonio Public Library.  The colored one was taken by the author

There are two sources for the history of the site and the initial Carnegie Library: the first is Emily Crawford Wilson's introductory essay for the Briscoe's Catalogue, The West Starts Here, San Antonio, Briscoe Art Museum, 2023, pp.13-33.  The other is "210 W. Market St - A History," a handout published by the San Antonio Public Library Portal, n.d., which can be accessed at: https://guides.mysapl.org/libraryportal/BuildingHistory

 

For the 1930 library in its original state, see:  "New S.A. Library Opens its Doors to the Public,San Antonio Light,  Aug. 3, 1930, pp.1,22.