Alamo Mission in San Antonio - Restoration

Restoration

Driscoll offered to donate the money required to tear down the convent, build a stone wall around the Alamo complex, and convert the interior into a park. The legislature was asked to make the final determination of what should be done with the convent. Many members of the legislature saw no good way to end the battle; Robert and Olson commented that "regardless of what they decided, they were going to end up having a group of very angry, very politically active women aligned against them". The legislature thus postponed a decision until after the 1910 elections. Those elections gave the state a new governor, Oscar Branch Colquitt. On December 28, 1911, Colquitt held a meeting for "all persons interested, and who had any information they could give me, about the Alamo as it stood at the time of the butchery of Travis and his men". Both de Zavala and Driscoll spoke, and Colquitt toured the property. Three months after his visit, Colquitt removed the DRT as official custodians of the Alamo, citing the fact that they had done nothing to restore the property since gaining control. He also announced an intent to rebuild the convent. Shortly thereafter, the legislature paid to demolish the building that had been added by Hugo and Schmeltzer and authorized $5000 to restore the rest of the complex. The restorations were begun but could not be finished as the appropriation was not large enough to cover all of the costs.

Driscoll was livid over Colquitt's decisions and used her influence as a major donor to the Democratic Party to undermine him. At the time, Colquitt was considered running for U.S. Senate. Driscoll told the New York Herald Tribune that "the Daughters desire to have a Spanish garden on the site of the old mission, but the governor will not consider it. Therefore, we are going to fight him from the stump. ... We are also going to make speeches in the districts of State Senators who voted against and killed the amendment" to return control of the mission to the DRT. In a compromise and to save face, Colquitt left the state, ostensibly on state business. This left Lieutenant Governor William Harding Mayes in authority. In 1913, Mayes agreed to allow the upper-story walls to be removed from the convent, leaving only the one-story walls of the west and south portions of the building. The conflict over what to do with the buildings became known as the Second Battle of the Alamo.

Over the next several decades, Driscoll continued to work towards creating a plaza with the chapel as its centerpiece. In 1931, she convinced the state legislature to purchase two tracts of land between the chapel and Crockett street. The legislature appropriated most of the money necessary to buy the land, and Driscoll paid the remainder out of her own pocket. The legislature was later convinced to repay her. In 1935, she convinced the city of San Antonio not to place a fire station in a building near the Alamo; the DRT later purchased that building and made it the DRT library.

During the Great Depression, money from the Works Progress Administration and the National Youth Administration was used to construct a wall around the Alamo, to build a museum, and to raze several old buildings that were left on the Alamo property.

As recognition for their efforts in trying to preserve the Alamo, when Driscoll died in July 1945 and de Zavala died in March 1955, their bodies were laid in state in the Alamo Chapel.

The Alamo was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1960, was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1961, was added to the National Register of Historic Places when they were founded in 1966, and is a contributing propertly to the Alamo Plaza Historic District, which was designated in 1977. As San Antonio prepared to host the Hemisfair in 1968, the long barracks was roofed and turned into a museum. Few structural changes have taken place since then.

According to Herbert Malloy Mason's Spanish Missions of Texas, the Alamo is one of "the finest examples of Spanish ecclesiastical building on the North American continent". The mission, along with the others located in San Antonio, is at risk from environmental factors, however. The limestone used to construct the buildings was taken from the banks of the San Antonio River. It expands when confronted with moisture and then contracts when temperatures drop, shedding small pieces of limestone with each cycle. Measures have been taken to partially combat the problem.