THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Changes in San Antonio last 25-30 years
INTERVIEW WITH: Walter Mathis
DATE: 17 July 1995
PLACE: Mr. Mathis' home in King William
INTERVIEWER: Sterlin Holmesly
TAPE I, Side 1
H: Interview with Malter Mathis, July 17, 1995, at his home in King William [District]. This is Sterlin Holmesly.
M: My name is Walter Mathis. I was born in San Antonio and lived all of my life here.
H: Mr. Mathis, we were just talking about the changes in San Antonio since HemisFair, 1968. I'd like your thoughts on some of those changes. And then later, in particular, I want to get in on the King William area.
M: Right. As I think back about it, during the time of the HemisFair, San Antonio was almost a small town. It's developed a great deal and there have been many changes.
H: And some of those changes that you've seen, parti-cipated in?
M: Well, it was just a great growth of the tourist industry. And if you've noticed downtown which we'd had all those hotels during HemisFair, I don't have the exact number of rooms, but we added a tremendous number, and they're still under construction. There's one here on South St. Mary's, one of the suites-type of hotel. There's one over M: on...off the freeway, and they are not only downtown, but in the suburbs out north. The number of hotel rooms has increased tremendously. Which backs up our main theory - that tourism is so vital to this town.
H: Tourism and conventions.
M: Conventions. Well, that's sort of together, right.
H: Yeah, convention industry.
M: But it's just grown tremendously. It's a big, big thing.
H: And may become particularly more important as Kelly Air Force Base begins to shut down and there may possibly be further reductions.
M: But also a change, of course. All of us were inter-ested in sports before; since HemisFair we have become a sports town. That seems to be the main thing in San Antonio now.
H: Well, the San Antonio Spurs wouldn't be here; there would have been no arena for the Spurs to move to from Dallas.
M: And then we're getting all the other types of sports too.
H: Yeah. We have hockey, we have Canadian football.
M: Right. And we're really a big sports town, which everybody likes. And that's good business.
H: What about the economics of the town?
M: They have not changed a great deal. But we do have a number of companies that have moved in, particularly on the Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: North Side. There are a lot of computer companies. We have not done as well as Austin along that line, but we are expanding.
H: What about medicine? The Medical School.
M: Well, that's tremendous. And we've made great strides. The Medical Center is just a marvelous institution. It has spawned many, many other medical facilities. And you'd be surprised how many different fields we've become proficient in and prominent in the medical field.
H: And the...
M: ...the number of big hospitals. We've got a number of hospitals out in the suburbs.
H: And the Texas Research Park, I think, was the direct product of the Medical Center.
M: Absolutely. And it's just...that's one of the big developments since HemisFair. Texas Research Park. And it's going to keep going. It's just getting off the ground, really.
H: Let's talk about King William. The version I got is that your house in Olmos Park was going to be taken by the North Expressway. Is that true?
M: That's correct. It was south of Olmos Park. I had a very nice cottage on Mulberry and Stadium Drive.
H: Okay.
M: And Mayor MacAllister was so interested in the freeway, Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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and I wasn't interested in it; I was opposed to it. And M: Wanda Ford invited me to an anti-freeway rally. We wanted it to go out the railroad track, which is a little to the west, and it would just shoot out and wouldn't have bothered anybody. But instead, they took the map of this area and took the green areas, the park areas, and just put a...took a pencil and put a strip right through there. And that's the way it went, right up through the Olmos Basin. Anyway, I went to this rally and they had this...Wanda had this huge map up there, hundreds and hundreds of people, was held out in the Sunken Gardens Theater. And I looked up there and they had the route of the freeway through all the green areas and there was a little, tiny pear-shaped object in the middle of the right lane, and I said, "Oh, my god, that's my swimming pool!" [laughter] And the freeway went right through my house, and I was very much opposed to it, but didn't do any active fighting it. And Mr. MacAllister, who was such a great guy, came to see me and he said, "Now, Walter, don't be active in this anti-freeway thing; you're going to come out just all right." Well, I didn't want to lose my home, but I had to. And so, I started looking around, and I've always, since childhood, known about the King William District, because many of the old families still live down here. But I rode around, and I saw this old house that was the I.T. Pryor house - known by the Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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Historical Association as the Norton/Pryor House - and it's now the Norton/Mathis/Pryor House. But anyway, it fas-M: cinated me because of the number of windows on the south side. And I thought, my god, what's inside of that house? Anyway, I made some inquiries, and it had been divided into about eight apartment units. The porches had been closed, and it was the entire backyard...was a big gravel parking area. It was in terrible repair. And I made an attempt to find the owner, which I did - he lived out of state. Anyway, after much negotiation I bought the house.
H: And its address is?
M: 401 King William.
H: Okay.
M: And I was greatly encouraged by O'Neil Ford. He knew all about the house and about the construction...
H: O'Neil Ford, the architect?
M: Yes. And the reason that it fascinated him was the construction, the stone construction. It's just made of a ...thousands of great big, huge limestone blocks. And the four-story quality of it appealed to me. Anyway, I had a hard time getting it, and I finally negotiated and bought the house.
H: This was after your place on Mulberry was...
M: I knew that I was going to lose my house.
H: Was that condemned?Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: Oh, yeah. But I was...didn't fight it. I had a terrible time establishing a value, because the appraisers from Austin couldn't understand how I could have that much M: money in it, because I put swimming pool in and many, many improvements. And put a seven-foot stone wall around it, and it was really a beautiful place. And they...so I had a big argument with them about how much I could get for it. We finally settled and I bought this house. And now that was in the...during the HemisFair, that was in 1968.
H: Okay, you bought this house?
M: Bought this house, and I moved. I had to get out of my house, so I moved to a downtown hotel and started con-struction here. And I had fifteen men that worked a year and half restoring this house.
H: They stripped out the apartments and restored it.
M: Completely gutted the house. And I did it from... with new copper plumbing from the street in, and I put all the plaster, hundreds of loads of plaster had to go out. And put all new plumbing facilities, just...and I restored the rooms the way they were. And much of the millwork had been torn out. The house had fifteen stained-glass windows that were taken out, and luckily I found them in a pile in the basement.
H: Wonderful.
M: And there was a man here named...at the time - he's Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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dead now - named Black, Black Art Glass, and he re-did those. And then I did, I just made a big project...it took a year and a half to restore it.
H: Was O'Neil Ford involved in the project?
M: Oh, yes. Very much.
H: Was he your lead...?
M: Well, yes, but he wouldn't...he'd never send me a bill. He didn't charge me a penny. And I called his secretary once and I said, "Look, Mr. Ford's been over here three times this week, and he's got to send me a bill." She said, "Oh, no, he'd never send you a bill. He's so pleased you're doing the house over." But we got help from all sorts of places. The Sherwin-Williams Company sent some of their research people down here, and we took samples of the plaster and found the original paint colors. And then underneath the... There was a big dado all through the downstairs, and it had a gold-leaf design that was painted over, and I got an artist to make a double-stencil and we re-gold-leafed. That took him four months to do that downstairs. But anyway, I restored the house and I re-named it Villa Finale because it's going to be my last, going to be my last home. I'll never have another house.
H: And were your friends saying, "What the hell you're doing redoing a house in that decaying area of town?"
M: Crazy. I even had a good friend of mine, who's a Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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lawyer, brought...after I bought the house, I brought him over here and, "Walter," he said, "You haven't signed anything yet, I hope." [laughter] And my brother, who was an architect, I brought him over here and he looked it all over, because see, the neighborhood was so bad, and he said, M: "Well, I'll tell you this, Walter," said, "It can't do anything but get better, it's so bad."
H: And the neighborhood then was mostly apartment houses, old houses broken in...
M: Rundown houses and so on. Anyway, I bought this house and started with...and I got a superb carpenter named Basilio Gonzalez, and he was the crewmaster, and he had fourteen employees. And they went to work on this house. And what moldings and all were gone, they found pieces of and reproduced, and just re-did the whole house!
H: And did you buy some more property down here?
M: Yes. After that, I to try to help improve the neighborhood. I bought fifteen additional houses in the... excuse me, fourteen additional houses in the district and started restoring them. And after my house was finished I moved these crews into these other places. And what I would do would be to buy one of these big, fine old houses and then I would, number one, fix the foundation and number two, put a new tin roof, a new roof on it. And then, I would attempt to sell the house to either someone I knew or Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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someone I didn't know, who would use their money to restore it. And I did many of those deals with nothing down.
H: You carried the...?
M: Carried the paper and enabled them, particularly young couples, [inaudible] them to spend their money to remodel. But they had to agree to restore the house properly. And M: about that time, the city established the Historic Ordinance, a protective ordinance, established the Historic Review Board, where all plans and architectual changes had to be cleared.
H: And, of course, King William became an historic dis-trict.
M: Right. The city helped us [inaudible], ...Conservation Society, the City made this an Historic District.
H: How long did it take to get the other fourteen houses restored and occupied?
M: Oh, that happened over a period of, say, ten years.
H: And...but then it's...
M: But then it got out of my hands, which is wonderful, because other people started buying houses and restoring them. I couldn't do the whole thing, but I did get fourteen of them going.
H: As I was about to say that you started a wave and the wave kept spreading, and now almost the entire district has been redone.Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: Pretty well. There's still some holdouts, it's not quite as desirable as you'd like it to be.
H: But now there's...lately, there's been another effect, and that's the business revival that's going on on South Alamo called Southtown.
M: That's right. We welcome it. And the bed and break-fasts.
H: Right.
M: Now, I personally am not opposed to bed and breakfast because these big houses, not many people really want a house of the size of some of these houses, because of the utility bills and so on.
H: Right.
M: And so, I'm not...some of the neighbors down here are very much opposed to bed and breakfast, but I don't think they're...as long as they're handled properly I think it's all right.
H: Well, how many B&B's are there in King William now?
M: I don't know, I think around thirty; I'm not sure.
H: As compared to none in '68.
M: Right. None.
H: That's become a very attractive part of the city.
M: Right. Uh-huh. I restored a house called the "Oge House" on Washington Street, and it's where General Oge lived. He was the Commander of the Arsenal. And I sold it Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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to some Magadigans, people from California, and they made a very fine bed And breakfast out of it. It's the big, three story house up off of the King William Park.
H: When did the Conservation Society come into King William and restore the Wulf House?
M: Well, that happened shortly after that. And O'Neil and Wanda Ford and I were really instrumental in getting them to do that. The house was for sale, and it was going to be as M: a...contract out on it for a mortuary. A lot of us who lived here just thought it would ruin our street to have that, and so we went to the Conservation Society and asked if they would accept it if we got it. And so, we got a committee, and I contacted a hundred and fifty people, and then we had a number of very generous... Mrs. Irene Schir-ren - her family gave a matching grant of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and we raised three hundred thousand and bought the property.
H: That's what it took to buy the property and then the restoration was extra.
M: Was extra and the Conservation Society...we also helped raise the money and they got the money, they got a federal grant, and saved...we saved the Wulf House. We were very proud of that effort.
H: Which is at the intersection of King William and St. Mary's.Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: Right. It's a beautiful house and it's the Conser-vation Society Headquarters now. But it's the keynote for the whole district.
H: That's where you enter.
M: Where you enter, and it was very important to preserve it. And, of course, prior to that a Mrs. Edna Steves Vaughn had given the Steves House to the Conservation Society. And I felt that my house, in between, would kind of link it all together.
H: Right. Well, what other aspects of King William have changed? Is it gentrification?
M: Well, that's sort of an ugly word because we...really that isn't...it hasn't happened here. Because many of the original families have had their old houses - have kept them. And, of course, we're a totally integrated neigh-borhood, and want to be that way. So there's really no gentrification here.
H: Right.
M: That's really a wrong word in this area.
H: Well, if it's not gentrification, how would you style it? People who simply like old houses?
M: Like old houses. Right. But gentrification means moving out the original settlers and moving in, and that really hasn't happened here.
H: Is there a feeling of neighborhood here? Do they...?Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: Very much so. There's an organization called the King William Association, which is open to everybody at ten dollars a year. And it has a very active agenda - monthly meetings, and parties and so on. And their purpose is to try to improve the neighborhood and help in any way they can.
H: Do you, for example, go over to the Beauregard or Rosario's for meals?
M: Oh, frequently. And we have a number of new...we have a new restaurant called Babylon, and another one called the M: Magnolia Gardens, or something like that. And then Justin's Ice Cream has opened a place on South Alamo, and we like to patronize the locals things, local restaurants.
H: And, incidentally, Justin came to town for HemisFair.
M: Right. And stayed.
H: And stayed, along with some others. Well, what other aspects of San Antonio have you noticed major changes in, since HemisFair? Because of or perhaps...
M: Well, the skyline. There have been a number of large, new buildings. And then tremendous development on the North Side, on the Loop, and out I-10 and so on. It's just completely...all of that wasn't here at all.
H: There's still a hole in retail downtown. It's busy on the east end with River Center, busy with the Market on the west end.Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: And dead inside.
H: And dead in the middle. What can be done about that?
M: I don't know what the solution there is. But it's really, really bad. Now the big movement with the theater district, with the Majestic and the Empire Theaters, that's been a big help. But there has to be something there. We had a big change with paving the streets downtown, with bricks and all that. And that helped some, but there is just not any great revitalization of downtown.
H: Well, in some ways that paving of the Tri-Party Project finished off some businesses downtown, because the streets H: were torn up and...
M: They just closed up.
H: ...some offices moved out.
M: But there are a number of things. There's the new Children's Museum. A number of things on Houston Street that are positive.
H: Right. And I keep hearing that there will be some retail activity and housing activity on Houston Street.
M: Well, there's just the sheer force of the tourist trade. I know that on Alamo Plaza a lot of those businesses are doing very well. I mean they just pack in there.
H: But there's nothing to move the tourist from the River and the Alamo into the central district.
M: On down there, right.Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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H: So someone needs to have an idea.
M: To do that.
H: Including, I think, getting more people living downtown.
M: Well, there's a big movement for that. And as I understand it, the large number of those apartments have very good occupancy ratios.
H: And the Majestic Building, particularly, I think is very well occupied.
M: And that's very positive. So, we'll just have to see if things can be developed to interest more people downtown. H: Anything else you can think of that HemisFair changed? M: Well, as I say, San Antonio was a different city then - much smaller in feeling and thinking and all.
H: Do you think it changed attitudes?
M: Oh, yes. I think that we're much more progressive. However, that was a marvelous movement putting HemisFair on. You had tremendous community support. Everybody was enthu-siastic about HemisFair.
H: And it reached across all strata.
M: Right.
H: One of the first community-wide projects.
M: Right.
H: And the...some people I've talked with said that was the beginning of the end of the old money running San Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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Antonio.
M: I think you're right, a whole new thing.
H: New people came to town, new money.
M: San Antonio was the old money, banking clique sort of ran things, and then when the banks all had problems and changed ownerships...
H: And names and [inaudible]... [laughter]
M: The only thing that didn't change too much was Frost National Bank.
H: Yeah, I have an interview with Tom on how his bank survived, intact, the crises of the '70s and '80s.
M: Right.
H: Well, do you think the changes, by and large, have been H: beneficial to the city?
M: I do, I do. I think the town...of course, this latest thing, this Kelly thing is such a blow. But a lot of us really expected that. I mean, you can't escalate for wartime and expect to keep that...that's the whole purpose of Kelly Field was to...and our defense. And if we're not going to need that enormous defense, we're going to have to cut back.
H: I saw a letter to the editor in the newspaper the other day that said in effect: You know, nobody cried at the end of World War II when they were firing thirty thousand soldiers a month and getting them home.Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: Well, all those people at Kelly have good jobs and they'd like to keep them forever, but they're just not going to be able to.
H: I don't think the government can always be the employer of last resort, when there's no purpose for it.
M: That's right. But I do think that, with the proper help and all, that we can do...a lot of privatization can take place, and can take care of a lot of those jobs.
H: Mr. Mathis, there's one question that recurs in my interviews. Where is the young leadership coming from in San Antonio? The Zachrys are gone, some of the others are less active. Who do you see on the scene that can take charge?
M: Well, you have a lot of next...second and third M: generations of those same families. The Zachrys have two...a number of extremely...two extremely fine men who are running that. The Steves family have three that are doing that. There are a lot of young Butts, Charles Butts' nephews. And there are a lot of those people that are coming on; they're just the ones that are going to have to take the leadership.
H: Well, do you see any leadership coming from the new businesses in town? Sony, Coors Family now has a business here, Southwestern Bell moved its corporate headquarters here?Walter Mathis (Tape 1 of 1)
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M: Southwestern Bell has brought in some excellent people and if you're familiar with it, a lot of those people have just jumped right in to great civic activities. South-western Bell is a very fine company and their management is very fine.
H: Anything else you'd like to talk about?
M: No. I appreciate you coming by. I'll be interested to see how, when you put all of this together.
H: Well, it's going to take awhile. The interviews are being transcribed by volunteers, and they had a major project they've just finished, and now they're...
M: And you'll have so many different approaches too.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1, ABOUT .. MINUTES.