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Essay
In this 1926 stereograph, the newly built Medical Arts Building (now the Emily Morgan Hotel) towers over the Alamo
and the partially demolished Long Barracks. It illustrates the tension that has always existed in San Antonio between
the desire to preserve the past and need to build for the future.
Preserving a Place for the Living
PHOTO RETRIEVED FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, HTTPS://WWW.LOC.GOV/ITEM/93517171/.
by Brantley Hightower, AIA
On a Friday morning in late March, a dozen or
so members of the public sat in rows of stackable
chairs in the large orst-noor meeting room of the
Clif Morton Development and Business Services
Center. Looking down upon them was the Historic
Compliance and Technical Advisory Board seated
behind a raised dais.
After calling the meeting to order and dispatching a number of routine business items, the board
entertained presentations from individual property
owners. Taylyn Cunningham approached the lectern and told the story of how his family had grown
up on San Antonio9s East Side. Feeling a connection
to that community, he and his wife purchased a
1,500-sf house in the historic Dignowity Hill neighborhood just east of downtown. He described how
some of the neighboring homes had been thoughtfully restored by their owners while others had been
abandoned and were now occupied by squatters.
He told of how he had embarked on an efort to
restore his 1908 home, investing more than its purchase price to make it livable.
Despite the improvements being only partially
complete, code enforcement oïcers had ordered
work on the property to be stopped because the
work that had been done was not considered appropriate by the San Antonio Oïce of Historic Preservation, the city department charged with protecting
aspects of the city having
