The personality of American cities . f a City Hallfacing it, the Main Plaza, where the grave towers ofthe little cathedral look down upon the palm-trees andthe beggars, the newer, open squares — always plazasin San Antonio — and then, best of all, the Alamo Plaza,with that squat namesake structure facing it — the lionof a town of many lions. These open places are thedistinctive features of the oldest and the best of theTexas towns. They lend to it the Latin air that rendersit different from most other cities in America. Theyhelp to make San Antonio seem far more like Europethan America. To thi
The personality of American cities . f a City Hallfacing it, the Main Plaza, where the grave towers ofthe little cathedral look down upon the palm-trees andthe beggars, the newer, open squares — always plazasin San Antonio — and then, best of all, the Alamo Plaza,with that squat namesake structure facing it — the lionof a town of many lions. These open places are thedistinctive features of the oldest and the best of theTexas towns. They lend to it the Latin air that rendersit different from most other cities in America. Theyhelp to make San Antonio seem far more like Europethan America. To this old town come the Texans, always in greatnumbers for it is their great magnet — the focusingpoint that has drawn them and before them, their fathers,their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers — farreaching generations of Texans who have gone here is the distinct play-ground of the Lone StarState. Its other cities are attractive enough in theirseveral ways, but at the best their fame is distinctly com- 256. SAN ANTONIO 257 mercial — Fort Worth as a packing-house town, Dallasas a distributing point for great wholesale enterprises,Houston as a banking center, Galveston as the greatwater-gate of Texas and the second greatest ocean portof the whole land. San Antonio is none of these the last census showed her to be the largest of allTexas cities in point of population, it is said by her jeal-ous rivals and it probably is true, that nearly half of thatpopulation is composed of Mexicans; and here is apart of our blessed land where the Mexican, like hisdollar, must be accepted at far less than his nominalvalue. But if it were not for these Mexicans — that delicatestrain of the fine old Spanish blood that still runs inher veins — San Antonio would have lost much of hernaive charm many years ago. The touch of the oldgrandees is everywhere laid upon the city. In thenarrow streets, the architecture of the solid stonestructures that crowd in up
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectcitiesandtowns, booky
