Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History

by Andrew Carroll

  What did surprise me, prior to coming here, was learning how many iconic American landmarks—including Congress Hall, the President’s House, Monticello, Fraunces Tavern, and Ford’s Theatre—have either been slated for destruction in the interest of commercial development or come irreparably close to utter ruin due to apathy and neglect. The President’s House actually was torn down, and the other buildings would have been razed or condemned if preservationists hadn’t jumped to their defense.

  A U.S. Navy officer named Uriah Levy almost single-handedly saved Monticello in 1836, when he bought Jefferson’s crumbling and forlorn estate in order to restore its former grandeur. The Colonial Dames of America prevented the demolition of Congress Hall in 1870, and thirty years later the Daughters of the American Revolution spared Fraunces Tavern from being flattened to make room for a parking lot. Ford’s Theatre had fallen into such disrepair by the end of the nineteenth century that on June 9, 1893, twenty-two government clerks inside the building (which, by then, had become a War Department annex after serving as a glorified warehouse) were crushed to death when the entire front section collapsed. Today, all of these sites are well-maintained and protected national landmarks.

  Rescuing old structures is tedious, unglamorous work that often involves tangling with local bureaucracies, filling out endless paperwork, getting petitions signed, and mastering arcane city ordinances and zoning laws. On rare occasions, though, these efforts explode into dramatic clashes, and in the history of the preservation movement, no battle has become more of a public spectacle than the fight to save a former Spanish mission deep in the heart of Texas, my next destination.

  Its name, appropriately enough, is synonymous with defiance against overwhelming odds.

  It is, of course, the Alamo.

  THE MENGER HOTEL AND ADINA DE ZAVALA’S RESIDENCE

  Colonel Bowie will leave here in a few hours for [San Antonio de] Bexar with a detachment of from thirty to fifty men. Capt. Patton’s Company, it is believed, are now there. I have ordered the fortifications in the town of Bexar to be demolished, and if you should think well of it, I will remove all the cannon and other munitions of war to Gonzales and Copano, blow up the Alamo and abandon the place, as it will be impossible to keep up the Station with volunteers, [and] the sooner I can be authorized the better it will be for the country.

  —General Sam Houston to Henry Smith, governor of the Texas territory, in a January 17, 1836, letter. After Colonel James Bowie arrived at the Alamo, he wrote to Smith directly and said the fort was worth defending. Smith agreed.

  BARRICADED IN A freezing, rat-infested room inside the Alamo, the lone defender had gone almost three days without food, water, or sleep after armed men had positioned themselves around the compound. Word of the standoff ricocheted across America, prompting a deluge of supportive messages for the fatigued but tenacious holdout. WIN OR LOSE, WE CONGRATULATE YOU UPON YOUR SPLENDID PATRIOTISM AND COURAGE, read one telegram from New York signed by John B. Adams, a descendant of President John Adams. Editors from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wired San Antonio: COMMANDANT OF THE ALAMO.… WILL YOU SEND THROUGH THE POST-DISPATCH A MESSAGE TO THE WOMEN OF ST. LOUIS, WHO ARE WATCHING WITH GREAT INTEREST YOUR OWN GALLANT DEFENSE OF THE ALAMO?

  The “commandant” was no military officer but a twenty-five-year-old Texas schoolteacher named Adina De Zavala, who had commenced her one-woman siege on February 10, 1908. De Zavala replied to the Post-Dispatch:

  My immortal forefathers suffered every privation to defend the freedom of Texas. I, like them, am willing to die for what I believe to be right.

  The fight is more than for the possession of the Alamo. Like every battle for its custody, the immortal principle of liberty and right is involved. In these days many people fear to fight for their rights, owing to the notoriety. I am not that kind.…

  The officers cannot starve me into submission.

  De Zavala’s impassioned statement echoed the urgent message William Barret Travis had dashed off seventy-two years earlier on February 24, 1836, when his two hundred Texian and Tejano rebels were fortified inside the old mission, surrounded by several thousand Mexican troops serving under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna. (Anglo Texans originally called themselves Texians; Tejanos were settlers of Mexican ancestry.) Travis, a twenty-six-year-old lieutenant colonel, had assumed command of the garrison after Colonel James Bowie was stricken with an incapacitating illness.

  “To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World,” Travis wrote:

  Fellow citizens & compatriots

  I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man—The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, & every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—

  Victory or death

  William Barret Travis

  Lt. Col. Comdt

  Carried past the Mexican lines by Captain Albert Martin, Travis’s plea was copied and widely disseminated. The Texas Republican published a version of the letter on March 2, and the Telegraph & Texas Register reprinted it on March 5.

  Reinforcements did come, but the support was too little, too late. Before sunrise on March 6, General Santa Anna ordered his troops to invade, and they caught Travis’s men by surprise; Mexican soldiers had snuck up on the fort’s sentinels, exhausted after nearly two weeks of constant bombardment, and stabbed them to death before they could sound an alarm.

  Awakened by crackling gunfire and cries of “Viva Santa Anna!” the Alamo’s defenders grabbed their loaded rifles and scrambled into position. Travis was shot dead early on after exposing himself to enemy fire while leaning over one of the main walls. Santa Anna’s troops first breached the Alamo’s north side, and when the Texians and Tejanos tried to repel the swarming invaders, the southern end became vulnerable and within minutes the defenders were being hit from every direction. Most retreated into the small church and long barracks and, in their haste, failed to spike the cannons, enabling Mexican soldiers to swivel them around and blast the buildings at close range. According to legend, Davy Crockett remained in the courtyard and, when his ammunition ran out, swung his rifle like a club and fought hand-to-hand before being overpowered. Colonel Bowie, delirious and barely able to move, was reportedly shot in his bed.

  The battle was over by sunup, and Santa Anna’s men methodically walked the grounds ramming their bayonets into any body that showed a flicker of life. Wives and children of the Texians and Tejanos, who had survived by hiding in the church’s sacristy, were spared, and Santa Anna instructed them to return home and spread the word about his victory.

  They did, but far from inciting fear, as Santa Anna had hoped, stories about the slaughter sparked an uproar and brought in droves of new volunteers eager to fight for Texas’s independence. “[Had Santa Anna] treated the vanquished with moderation and generosity,” the New York Post declared, “it would have been difficult if not impossible to awaken that general sympathy for the people of Texas which now impels so many adventurous and ardent spirits to throng to the aid of their brethren.”

  Hollering “Remember the Alamo!” 900 soldiers led by General Sam Houston descended on Santa Anna’s 1,400 troops encamped along the San Jacinto River outside of what is now La Porte, Texas, on April 21, 1836. Santa Anna knew that Houston’s men were nearby but never expected an attack in broad daylight from a numerically inferior force. The Battle of San Jacint
o resulted in one of the most lopsided triumphs in American history; approximately 650 of Santa Anna’s men were killed, while Houston, who led the infantry charge and was himself wounded, lost only 9.

  More than 700 Mexicans, including Santa Anna, were taken prisoner as well. The self-anointed “Napoléon of the West” had valiantly tried to evade capture by stripping down to his silk underwear and hiding in a local marsh. Though urged by his men to sling a rope around Santa Anna’s neck and hang him from the nearest tree, Houston chose to spare his life, and the two men signed a treaty that called for the withdrawal of Mexican forces from Texas.

  (Between 1837 and 1855, Santa Anna became president of—and was exiled from—Mexico three times. He temporarily retired to Staten Island, New York, where he imported a sweet, sticky substance from the Mexican sapodilla tree that inventor Thomas Adams turned into a popular confection called Chiclets. Before dying in 1876, Santa Anna, conqueror of the Alamo, helped introduce chewing gum to America.)

  Throughout Sam Houston’s April 1836 negotiations with Santa Anna at San Jacinto, one of Houston’s interpreters and most trusted advisors was a forty-seven-year-old Tejano named Lorenzo de Zavala—Adina De Zavala’s grandfather. (And yes, the de in his name is generally lowercase, while hers is spelled De.) Elected governor to one of the largest territories in Mexico in 1832, he was appointed by President Santa Anna to be the first Mexican plenipotentiary to France in 1833. De Zavala resigned his post in protest, however, when Santa Anna revealed himself to be a vainglorious dictator. De Zavala moved to Texas, fell in love with the territory, and fervently advocated for its right to be an autonomous nation. He signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 3, 1836, and participated in drafting Texas’s constitution two weeks later. Impressed by his loyalty and political acumen, de Zavala’s fellow delegates picked him to be the republic’s first vice president. After assisting Houston at San Jacinto, he returned to his home in Buffalo Bayou, less than a mile from the battlefield (his house, in fact, had served as a makeshift hospital for the wounded). While out rowboating that November, he tumbled into the bayou’s chilly waters and later succumbed to a fatal case of pneumonia.

  Adina De Zavala was born on November 18, 1861, in the same house where her grandfather had died, and she had grown up hearing stories about the Alamo, San Jacinto, and the Texas revolution. After studying history at Sam Houston Normal Institute, she accepted a teaching post in San Antonio and was dismayed, upon arriving in the city, to find the Alamo crumbling and vandalized. Graffiti marred the church’s walls, statues of saints had been smashed, and the floors were slick with bat guano. A mercantile company, Hugo & Schmeltzer, had converted what remained of the long barracks into a grocery-and-supplies store.

  In 1893, De Zavala founded the De Zavala Chapter—named after her grandfather, not herself—of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), a group formed one year earlier to protect historic sites throughout the state. De Zavala’s primary mission was to save the Alamo, and she was especially concerned that Hugo & Schmeltzer would sell the long barracks building, leaving its fate vulnerable to the whims of the next title holder. She secured a promise from Gustav Schmeltzer himself to give her organization first dibs on the property before another business or developer acquired it. Schmeltzer alerted De Zavala in 1903 that a prospective buyer had approached him about tearing down the structure and erecting an upscale hotel in its place, but he offered the DRT a preemptive bid of $75,000.

  That was an astronomical price for the tiny all-volunteer group, so De Zavala marched over to the Menger Hotel, right beside the Alamo, hoping to convince the owners to purchase the neighboring property for both patriotic and self-interested business reasons.

  The owners were away, but De Zavala was introduced to a guest named Clara Driscoll, the twenty-two-year-old heiress to the Driscoll family oil and real estate fortune and a staunch preservationist in her own right. Two years earlier, after touring cathedrals and holy sites overseas, Driscoll castigated her fellow Texans in the San Antonio Express for all but abandoning the Alamo, a sacred shrine in itself, she believed. “There does not stand in the world today a building or monument which can recall such a deed of heroism and bravery, such sacrifice and courage, as that of the brave men who fought and fell inside those historic walls,” she wrote. Like De Zavala, Driscoll came from noble Texas lineage (both of her grandfathers had fought at San Jacinto), and the two women hit it off instantly. Together they plotted to rescue the Alamo and headquartered their efforts in the Menger Hotel.

  Founded in 1859 by a stocky five-foot-tall German brewer and tavern owner named William Menger, the inn began as a modest rooming house built next to Menger’s saloon so that drunken cowboys had a place to sleep off his notoriously potent ale. Today it’s a five-story, 316-room hotel that takes up the entire block. (Not coincidentally, this is where I’m staying.)

  Hugo & Schmeltzer held firm to their $75,000 asking price but agreed to let the DRT pay incrementally. Driscoll and De Zavala launched an aggressive fund-raising campaign, confident that once Texans became aware of the Alamo’s precarious condition, they would flock to its aid. “Today its grim old walls, scarred and battered in that heroic struggle of liberty, stand threatened by vandalism and menaced by the hand of commercialism,” they proclaimed in a letter to potential contributors. “So [we] ask you one and all to join us in rallying around the Lone Star flag as it floats over the Alamo.”

  The financial cavalry never arrived. Donations were paltry, and with hours to go before their option with Hugo & Schmeltzer expired on April 17, 1903, Driscoll dipped into her personal savings and covered the initial down payment of $5,000.

  They now had until April 1904 to come up with $20,000, followed by five yearly installments of $10,000 each. In early May 1903, De Zavala and Driscoll persuaded the Texas legislature to allot $5,000 to the cause, but Governor Samuel Lanham vetoed the bill, claiming that the funds were not a “justifiable expenditure of the taxpayers’ money.”

  By February 1904 the DRT had drummed up less than $6,000. With time running out, Clara Driscoll agreed to pay not only the $14,000 but the five annual installments totaling $50,000. Driscoll’s extraordinary act of charity earned her wide praise, and De Zavala was able to shame the state legislature into reimbursing her generous friend. This time the governor signed the bill, and, in return for recouping her money, Driscoll agreed to transfer the Alamo’s title to the DRT, which would serve as the property’s official custodian. At long last the Alamo was in safe hands, and De Zavala was elated.

  Her joy, however, was short-lived; within months, a powerful new group formed solely to thwart her vision of seeing the long barracks resurrected to its former glory. Naming themselves the Alamo Mission Chapter, they demanded that what remained of the long barracks be destroyed entirely, leaving only the small church to represent the battle, even though many of the defenders had died inside or around the long barracks. De Zavala assumed the issue had been resolved, but the real showdown—which would become known as “the second battle for the Alamo”—was only just beginning.

  “Is there a specific part of the hotel where Adina De Zavala worked or stayed?” I ask Ernesto Malacara, who was employed by the Menger for thirty years and is now the hotel’s in-house historian. “I know she lived here in the early 1900s.”

  “The hotel has changed a lot since Miss De Zavala’s time, so it’s hard to say. This lobby is the same one built in 1859, but the rest of the hotel has gone through major renovations.”

  “And there’s no mention of De Zavala anywhere in the hotel?” I ask.

  “No,” Ernesto says, “but I’m going to talk with the manager, because there should be.”

  Clara Driscoll deserves recognition, too, but a joint De Zavala–Driscoll tribute would probably send both women whirling in their graves. Sadly, despite their fast friendship in 1903 and combined efforts to rescue the Alamo from developers in 1905, by 1906 tensions between the women were escalating and within a year’
s time they were outright enemies.

  Clara Driscoll had never liked the Hugo & Schmeltzer building and bought it, she later conceded, only to raze the “eyesore” completely and create a spacious plaza that focused attention on the church. De Zavala insisted that the long barracks’ foundations needed to be maintained and that a museum and library should be added to educate visitors about the Alamo’s history. As both women dug in their heels, Driscoll and her supporters seceded from the De Zavala Chapter of the DRT and created the Alamo Mission Chapter. De Zavala fired back, excoriating Driscoll for “pandering to the rabid desires of the money-getters, who for business reasons only, want to tear down ‘unsightly walls.’ ” Each side claimed to be the Alamo’s true protector, and the clash spilled into the courts.

  With the legal situation in limbo, pro-Driscoll members inside the DRT recommended leasing out the Hugo & Schmeltzer building commercially. If they weren’t allowed to knock it down anytime soon, they figured, why not profit from it in the interim?

  Upon hearing that the new renters might be vaudeville performers, an outraged De Zavala hired several men to guard the building around the clock. Sheriff’s deputies shooed them away but then realized that they had a larger problem on their hands: De Zavala was already hunkered down inside. “The [deputies] threw my men out bodily, expecting to take possession,” she recalled.

  They did not know I was in an inner room, and when I hurried out to confront them, demanding by what right they invaded the historic building, consternation reigned. They withdrew outside the building for whispered consultation. The instant they stepped out, I closed the doors and barred them. That’s all. There was nothing else for me to do but hold the fort. So I did.