Enos Gary owner of 1534 McKinley

I found the owner from 1940 - The Enos Gary's --- who is this guy? And what does an Entre Nous club do exactly? Hmmmm


He was the Principal at Brackenridge High School - where Grandpa Ozuna graduated
He was also an alumni from UT Austin Class of 1933 - Go Texas!


Gary sold the house in the 1940's to the Baptist Missionaries. The house was a parsonage from the 1940's (Oct 19th 1944 a petition to city council for a tax waiver) to at least 1963.

Boost like the Dickens!

Ben Hammond's House THEN (San Antonio Light and Gazette Jan 9, 1910) :







NOW:


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Hammond was one of the first developers of Highland Park. One of the first developers in San Antonio. He had big plans for the city. Hammond and Avant and Peck street derive from the first round of developers of Highland Park, San Antonio.

I wonder if he survived the crash of 1929?

History of the House Part II

I love San Antonio - we have a wonderful Conservation Society that holds lots of useful information and people regarding the neighborhood. I found out that you can discover the builder of your old San Antonio home by searching through the Bexar County Clerk's login search. The url is http://www.countyclerk.bexar.landata.com/Default.aspx. Select the Register button, once you have registered you will be able to select the Login-Search Button. Select the 1837-1863 Historical Records Search. If you know the original owner of the house - select Grantor/Grantee. Enter the search parameters of interest (I used last name and dates of interest.)

Gilman 1924-1928
a Mechanics Lien is the most useful in establishing the builder:

The Mechanic's Lien that was discovered for the house was a lien placed by HILLYER DEUTSCH and JARRATT CO to ensure payment.

HILLYER DEUTSCH and JARRATT CO was a lumber company - they are noted specifically in Donald E. Everette's book, Montevista - Architecture and Society in a Gilded Age. On page 99 he notes that a home on East Lynwood designed by the Kelwood Company used lumber from Hillyer Deutsch and Jarrett. The similarities beween the Spanish style Monte Vista homes and this Highland Park home are striking. On the other hand the lumber company supplied the material for the project managed by Contractor Amos Sweitzer and built for Mrs. Maude B. Hall on 104 East.

This ad is so pretty it had to be shared

May 8th 1910 San Antonio Light and Gazette

Houses in Highland Park

These pictures are here as a drop off point to support the google map I created to document significant houses in the neighborhood. The google map is also proxied through Hoopala so that the point locations are caught in the Augmented Reality Application Layar - search for highland in the Layar application for the iPhone or android and if you are in the neighborhood.


View Historic Highland Park San Antonio Homes in a larger map


1142 Highland Park San Antonio Texas

1702 McKinley, San Antonio Texas


James J. Jordan House
1510 Highland Boulevard
Jordan-Ivers Motor Company of San Antonio
Ford and Lincoln Dealers
1924 dealership location on corner of S. Alamo and Garden Street




Bert J. McLean House
City Editor of the San Antonio Light
Mrs. Bert J. McLean was the daughter of Mrs. A Vinz from Camp Douglas Wisconsin
a member of Highland Park Presbyterian Church
1915 Schley



H.C. Teich House
1014 Avant
He was a member of the Retail Merchants Association of Texas
In 1924 He owned a shop specializing in vulcanizing and retreading on 907 East Houston
Street
The couple had a baby boy was born on Sept 13


1026 Avant
Documented in Express News March 29, 1925 with photos






1426 Hicks
March 31 1929 Express News

Highlands Christian Church

There is a church on the corner by my house - made of limestone - the original name and build date of the church was a mystery. Nina and I got used to calling it the Beat Down Church ... the sad looking sign on the corner has it named "Clift of the Rock".. the church needs a powerwash in the worst way. I knew it had to have some kind of history because it is a substantial looking building .. limestone, stained glass, arched windows all that stuff. Thanks to the Historic Homeowners Fair sponsored by the City of San Antonio I was able to use an 1954 City Directory to lookup the the original church name - Highlands Christian Church ... Finally, I have a research hook.

October of 1951 was the groundbreaking - Roy D. Holt was the first Reverend of the church at this location.

Will N. Noonan was the architect : He built out some of the Monte Vista homes of the 1930's. He also designed a home for A.H. Wilde in 1933 , the N. stands for Nelson, he was born in 1885






April 2 1950 San Antonio Express
Riverside Baptist Church
3600 S. Presa
Plans are drawn




The Harlandale Masonic Lodge went up in 1925 and is still standing ... it was ugly to start with and has only gotten uglier ... amazing that its still around ..

Otto Linnartz

I have spent the last couple of days hunting down the Linnartz Home. Otto Linnartz was a manager/executive/owner lumberman for the PETRICH SAUR Lumber Co. He lived on South Street for a while and relocated to Avant when Highland Park was newly developed. Finding the location of this house was a little more complicated than the other searches I have done. I found the advertisement first while I was looking up a totally different house in Inverness (the neighborhood just south of Steves). As newspapers in 1920's San Antonio had no concept of privacy, I thought it would be easy to pop in Mrs. Otto Linnartz and find the bridge club or singing troupe or temperance society meeting with the address. It turns out that Mrs. Linnartz only showed up at other people's parties ... she never threw her own. So I had to revert to another way to track down Otto and family. I used the Bexar County Clerk's website and searched the historical records for Otto Linnartz as a grantee of a deed of trust in 1924. I found the pdf only after I asked a good friend with Internet Explorer to perform the search. It turns out that the Bexar County Clerk's office used a contractor named Landata and the bid was completely oblivious to the world of browsers, the website only works for Internet Explorer. That piece of crap application crashed three different browsers on my Mac ... Firefox, Safari and Opera all crapped out when I went to get the pdf.

The pdf of the deed of trust listed the neighborhood / block and tract numbers for the property. Here is where I had to get crafty. With the numbers off of the deed I want into the bcad (Bexar County Appraisal) search engine and looked up a property I knew was in the neighborhood. That lookup gave me the neighborhood number. What I wanted was the geographic ID ... so using the neighborhood number I used the map search interface of the BCAD and turned on the GEO-ID layer under the parcels option. I started scanning through the neighborhood looking for a block and tract number that matched the ones on the deed and sure enough ... I found the street and bounding block. I then switched over to google maps street view and walked the street until I found the house that matched the picture of the Highland Park advertisement. I also pumped in the geo-id into the Bexar County Appraisal District search engine and did a sanity check for the street number and name and valuation of the house.





View Historic Highland Park San Antonio Homes in a larger map

Highland Park Car Line

The convergence of the history of the neighborhood and the streetcar line.

San Antonio Express News March 12, 1911

Mechanic's Liens ... how to track down old houses

I love San Antonio - we have a wonderful Conservation Society that holds lots of useful information and people regarding the neighborhood. I found out that you can discover the builder of your old San Antonio home by searching through the Bexar County Clerk's login search. The url is http://www.countyclerk.bexar.landata.com/Default.aspx. Select the Register button, once you have registered you will be able to select the Login-Search Button. Select the 1837-1863 Historical Records Search. If you know the original owner of the house - select Grantor/Grantee. Enter the search parameters of interest (I used last name and dates of interest.)

Gilman 1924-1928
a Mechanics Lien is the most useful in establishing the builder:

The Mechanic's Lien that was discovered for the house was a lien placed by HILLYER DEUTSCH and JARRATT CO to ensure payment.





HILLYER DEUTSCH and JARRATT CO was a lumber company specifically noted in Donald E. Everette's book, Montevista - Architecture and Society in a Gilded Age. On page 99 he documents that a home on East Lynwood designed by the Kelwood Company used lumber from Hillyer Deutsch and Jarrett. The similarities between the Spanish style Monte Vista homes and this Highland Park home are striking. On the other hand, the lumber company supplied the material for the project managed by Contractor Amos Sweitzer and built for Mrs. Maude B. Hall on 104 East. The house could have been designed by a whole host of builders. I am still holding lots of circumstantial evidence with nothing definitive. The mechanics lien guaranteed the payment of $13,000 for materials and labor to the lumber company and set the terms of payment. The Vice President of Hillyer Deutsch and Jarrett was at the Clerk's office to sign the papers that day.

More houses in Highland Park 1925

Highland Park Blvd was developed to be 100 ft wide, if you drive down the street today the broad swath of land between the street and the sidewalk was called a parkway, it was intentional. The developer's planted palms and crepe myrtle alternating every 35 feet along the boulevard. In addition the developers privately funded the streetcar track build-out to connect to the downtown line.