Few American cities enjoy the likes of San Antonio's visual links with its dramatic past. The Alamo and four other Spanish missions, plus a host of additional landmarks and folkways surviving over the course of nearly three centuries, still lend San Antonio an "odd and antiquated foreignness." Adding to the charm of the nation's ninth largest city is a bend in the San Antonio River, saved to become a winding linear park through the heart of downtown and a world model for sensitive urban development. San Antonio's heritage has not been preserved by accident. The wrecking balls and headlong development that accompanied progress in nineteenth-century San Antonio roused an indigenous historic preservation movement—the first west of the Mississippi River to become effective. Its thrust has increased since the mid-1920s with the pioneering work of the San Antonio Conservation Society. Lewis Fisher peels back the myths surrounding more than a century of preservation triumphs and fai

Saving San Antonio: The Precarious Preservation of a Heritage

History

Lewis F. Fisher

Americas

Texas Tech University Press

Victor, New York, a prime target of the rapid expansion of suburban Rochester, is the fastest-growing township in Ontario County. It is also home of the state's only park devoted to the American Indian, on the site of Ganondagan, a Seneca village burned by a French army in 1687. Now in its third printing, this lavishly-illustrated book by a trained journalist portrays the forces which shaped and still shape the town, with the aid of 159 photographs plus charts, maps, chronology, extensive notes and an index.  In this book, Victor's history is broken into seven periods: its geologic past, Indian inhabitants (10,000 BC to 1788), arrival of New England settlers (1788-1812), initial development (1812-1865), the flourishing Victorian era (1865-1913), Depression years and recovery (1913-1946) and suburban growth, inevitable since Governor Thomas E. Dewey broke ground in Victor for the western section of the New York State Thruway in 1946. The area around the Victor interchange is now ! a center for high tech industry as carefully-planned residential development draws the town's population toward 8,000.

Victor (New York): The History of a Town

Maverick Publishing Company

San Antonio: Outpost of Empires

San Antonio's unique appeal is the pervasive ambience of a colorful, authentic past. Here real heroes lived and died. Here immigrants of all stripes labored to build a city--the nation's ninth-largest--that on one hand stands tall and gleaming, yet on the other seems little changed from the 1920s, or from Victorian times, or from the reign of Spanish kings. 
San Antonio: Outpost of Empires is a vivid, honest portrait in words and pictures of San Antonio's evolution over the course of nearly three centuries, from the days of the colonists of New Spain to the defense of the Alamo to the inrush of a "jumble of races" to the rapid growth of the modern era. 
Here the faces of persons like Davy Crockett, Robert E. Lee, Theodore Roosevelt, Geronimo and Queen Elizabeth II mingle with those of Spanish missionaries, female aviators, traildrivers, chili vendors, firemen and birdsellers as San Antonio: Outpost of Empires documents a remarkable city's march through time. 
The text is enhanced by 140 dramatically-displayed illustrations.

This is a concisely written, lavishly illustrated account of the founding, growth, decline and restoration of San Antonio's five Spanish colonial missions, a national treasure. Built by Franciscan friars and their Native American charges on the far frontier of New Spain, they stand today as the largest cluster of Spanish missions in the United States. One is preserved as the Alamo. The others form San Antonio Missions National Historical Park.

The Spanish Missions of San Antonio

More than the historical profile of one city, this well-illustrated book documents the successful struggle of a new suburb through a bitter incorporation war with the adjacent metropolis and then its survival through the use of revenue from traffic fines, a strategy told, uniquely, from the suburb's point of view. Also analyzed is the growth of Balcones Heights as one of the most densely populated cities in Texas and the bonanza of sales tax revenues which brought not only municipal affluence but also the problems and challenges of cities many times its size.

Balcones Heights: A Crossroads of San Antonio

San Antonio-based C. H. Guenther & Son, founded by a young German immigrant in 1851, is the oldest family-owned business in Texas and the oldest continually-operated family-owned milling company in the United States. Evolution from waterwheels to computers and from plain flour to mixes and frozen foods form the backdrop to this lavishly illustrated human story of a company whose Pioneer and White Wings brands approach nationwide distribution.

C. H. Guenther & Son at 150 Years : The Legacy of a Texas Milling Pioneer

San Antonio's five Spanish missions, which include the Alamo, were being pulled from the brink of destruction at the start of the 20th century, just as picture postcards were coming into vogue. Alamo to Espada profiles the dramatic visual transformation, with more than 150 illustrations and a chapter for each mission. A special section displays postcard images showing the variety of ways in which the Alamo has been remembered--in ceremonies, advertising and other promotions. A final section shows examples of the missions' architectural legacy, with examples of Alamo Revival and Mission Revival styles ranging from landmark railroad stations to hotels to beer gardens.

Alamo to Espada: A Vintage Postcard Profile of San Antonio's Spanish Missions

Much of San Antonio's distinctive charm derives from plazas placed in Spanish times to the River Walk, one of the world's most renowned linear parks. In this book they are uniquely portrayed in more than 165 vintage postcard images. Most date from the first half of the twentieth century, when the plazas, parks and River Walk were in transition to modern times. Most images thus bring a sense of recognition to residents and visitors alike. An index is included.
The vintage images are arranged to form a narrative in eight chapters: Military Plaza, Main Plaza, Alamo Plaza, Travis Park, River Walk, San Pedro Park, Brackenridge Park and Other Plazas and Parks, which include Madison Square Milam Park, Maverick Park, Romana Plaza, Woodlawn Lake Park, Riverside Park and Exposition Park. A foreword by longtime Trinity University history professor Char Miller puts the parks in a broad urban perspective.

San Antonio's Historic Plazas, Parks and River Walk: In Vintage Postcard Images

Foreword by Char Miller

River Walk: The Epic Story of San Antonio's River

How San Antonio's river was revived from a sluggish trickle to become a world-renowned model for river development is a story that is hardly known. For generations San Antonians have spun tales of rescue that rank with the most entertaining of Texas yarns. Outside writers swallowed them whole. This vividly illustrated book untangles the historical record. It reveals a story quite different from that of the well-worn tales. As their river began going dry more than a century ago, San Antonians refused to give up on the stream that had nourished them since Spanish times. They pumped in new water, fought floods, and turned the banks into a park. Years afterward they adopted a dramatic river design, then let it languish. They reembraced it decades later, just as a world s fair sparked the pedestrian traffic needed to make viable today s phenomenal River Walk, visited by some five million tourists each year. More than 200 illustrations, a great many of them never before published, make this book the premier portrayal of what has beeen ranked as the top travel destination in Texas.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lewis F. Fisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lewis F. Fisher

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lewis F. Fisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Saving San Antonio: The Precarious Preservation of a Heritage

Victor (New York): The History of a Town

San Antonio: Outpost of Empires

San Antonio: Outpost of Empires

The Spanish Missions of San Antonio

Balcones Heights: A Crossroads of San Antonio

C. H. Guenther & Son at 150 Years : The Legacy of a Texas Milling Pioneer

Alamo to Espada: A Vintage Postcard Profile of San Antonio's Spanish Missions

San Antonio's Historic Plazas, Parks and River Walk: In Vintage Postcard Images

River Walk: The Epic Story of San Antonio's River