Welcome to a new history of old San Antonio.

Episode 20, San Antonio on the break.

I'm Brandon Seal.

I'm my city of San Antonio

Tonight I'm looking at your lovely life

Frederick Law Olmsted was among the world's first landscape architects.

Originally from New England, he worked first as a journalist

before stumbling into a career that would see him design

Central Park in New York City, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and hundreds of other parks, campuses, and public places across the United States.

And yet in all his travels to American cities, young and old, one place stood out for him, for its setting, its, quote, odd and antiquated foreignness, and its, quote, singular composite character.

San Antonio in 1856 comprised in a regular polygon whose northwest corner sat at the intersection of the future Jackson

and Vance Jackson Roads, from which it ran southwest along the line, later known as Callahan Road,

around the future site of Port San Antonio, back northeast up Somerset Nogalitos Road,

then due east-northeast beneath the future Lone Star Brewery, over to where Commerce and Houston

streets meet up on the east side, then back northwest to join up with Hildebrand where it hits

North New Bromfels, and from there, more or less along the trajectory of Jackson Keller,

back up to its northwest corner. Of course, most of the lots within these limits still boasted

their own gardens and corrals, giving the town a distinctly rural and agricultural flair.

And note that all four of the southern missions were excluded from these city limits, and they

remained relatively independent, self-governing communities. This allowed them to preserve

some of their unique flavor, though it also meant that they were slower to develop.

In 1856, Olmsted arrived in San Antonio from the northeast and first sighted its rooftops from the hill that would later house Trinity University.

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