Parks
Park Advocates to Take on ‘Renewing and Repositioning’ Brackenridge Park
By 
Iris Dimmick |
Scott Ball / Rivard Report
Landscape architects tour Brackenridge Park in anticipation of the landscape conference in San Antonio on March 3.
At 1,500 acres, The Presidio of San Francisco is one of the largest and arguably one of the most unique urban national parks in the country.
“[Brackenridge Park] is a cultural park of the same complexity and layers of history that would rival The Presidio,” The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) President and CEO Charles Birnbaum told the Rivard Report during a phone interview Thursday.
At 343 acres, Brackenridge is San Antonio’s largest urban park and has incredible natural, archaeological, and architectural treasures that date back 11,000 years, Birnbaum said. “It’s entirely possible that this [park] is a sleeping giant.”
The Brackenridge Park Master Plan is slated to go before City Council for a vote in February, but the conversation about the future and value of the park will continue on March 3 when city leaders, architects, historians, and the community gather at the Pearl Stable for a full day of panels during the conference Leading with Landscape III: Renewing and Repositioning Brackenridge Park.
The event is co-sponsored and co-produced by TCLF and the Brackenridge Park Conservancy and aims to get visiting experts and locals to “look at this park with fresh eyes,” Birnbaum said. The conference is also supported by the Pearl, the John and Florence Newman Foundation, Mote and Margie Baird and the City of San Antonio’s Office of Historic Preservation. The Rivard Report is a media partner.
Admission for San Antonio residents is free, but online registration is required.
Birnbaum likened the conference to a kind of Antiques Roadshow for landscape architecture. Brackenridge Park is something that has always been in San Antonio’s “attic, [but] “I think we’ll find out it was actually a rare work of art.”
Founded in 1899 with a land donation to the City by George Washington Brackenridge, Brackenridge Park and its neighbors draw nearly 1.5 million visitors a year, led by the San Antonio Zoo and the growing Witte Museum. Only about one-third, 115 acres, is considered open space, including parking, trails, and pavilions. The Brackenridge Park Golf Course, for perspective, is also 115 acres.
Scott Ball / Rivard Report
Landscape architects tour the Japanese Tea Gardens in Brackenridge Park.
Updating the park’s master plan has taken several months longer than expected after the initial draft received strong criticism from the community that didn’t want to see vehicle access to the park limited by removing parking and closing down roads. The goal of the conference isn’t to come up with a new plan, but to “build a bigger tent” for discussions surrounding the park’s past, present, and future, Birnbaum said.
“I am excited that The Cultural Landscape Foundation selected San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park as the topic for a national conference on how parks and green infrastructure can best serve residents and help cities be globally competitive,” Mayor Ivy Taylor told the Rivard Report. She attended and spoke at the second Leading with Landscape conference in Houston last March and will participate in the March 3 event as well.
“This event will help us continue the dialogue about the importance of Brackenridge Park and how it represents the common heritage of our community,” Taylor added. “I think it will draw attention to the roles that cultural landscapes in general play in a great city like San Antonio.”
Two panels are scheduled so far. To prepare for their respective panels, several teams of landscape architects from all over the U.S. have already begun to research how Brackenridge fits into San Antonio’s history, culture, and park inventory.
A team with Cambridge-based Reed Hilderbrand came for rapid-fire tours of the city and its parks last week. The Rivard Report caught up with them towards the end of their trip, before their tour of San Pedro Springs Park and flight back to Massachusetts.
“It’s a lot to absorb,” said Douglas Reed, principal of the landscape architectural firm and founding board member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation. “Our task over the next few weeks is to define three issues or challenges that we see in the park and complement it with relevant experience [from our work with other parks] … which is a challenge in itself because the park is so rich.”
Scott Ball / Rivard Report
The Reed Hilderbrand team – (from left) Principal Chris Moyles, Senior Designer Christina Sohn, and Principal Douglas Reed – explore Brackenridge Park.
Reed Hilderbrand’s landscape project list includes the Buffalo Bayou Gardens and Arboretum in Houston, Long Dock Park in Beacon, New York, and Half-Mile Line in Massachusetts.
“There are intriguing and unusual things about the park,” he said. “That story is going to come out in the conference in a number of different ways.”
This is the first time the Leading with Landscape conference series will focus on a single park, but it will look to the parks of the entire city for context, Reed said.
The first panel will include representatives from other parks and stakeholders involved with open space including Hemisfair, the San Antonio River Authority, and the San Antonio Conservation Society. This conversation is aimed at exploring what works and what doesn’t in terms of local park management, funding, and use.
The second panel is for representatives from other cities, including Friends of the High Line Co-Founder and Executive Director Robert Hammond, to discuss what San Antonio and Brackenridge Park can learn from other cities.
“The real purpose is for this to be helpful and to shed light on the breadth of values that the park embodies,” Reed said.
Open space is one of the values that has been ignored in the park’s history, said Brackenridge Park Conservancy Director Lynn Bobbitt. While it is surrounded by cultural institutions, the park itself seems like an afterthought instead of an asset.
Bobbitt would like to see the park become part of a “cohesive destination” instead of separate entities – the zoo, museum, park, golf course – that visitors come to one at a time. Part of the master plan is to make the park more porous and interconnected so park users can seamlessly include open space into their itineraries.
“We’re not going to walk out of this conference with a new master plan,” she said. “The objective of the summit on Brackenridge is to continue the conversation about the importance of Brackenridge Park to this city at a higher level. We’re not talking about picnic tables, we’re talk about broader concepts like cultural and economic impacts.”
Because Brackenridge wasn’t designed by a famous architect like Frederick Law Olmsted, credited with founding landscape architecture, or Roberto Burle Marx, or Alice Recknagel Ireys, the park isn’t really in textbooks, Birnbaum said. It lacks “ownership” in the architectural world.
“Because of that, the park was treated as a sort of second class citizen,” he said. “It wasn’t of interest to people interested in history of park landscapes. … Brackenridge Park was never on my radar.”
With conversations like Leading with Landscape coming to town, however, park advocates hope Brackenridge Park will be pinging everyone’s radar.
Let’s hope this isn’t just another opportunity for the city to make money off of hotels as they did with Hemisfair park. To be a great park it needs lots of green space. The fewer cars and buildings, the better
I’ve been thinking a lot about the park recently. I was sad to hear that the grand lawn was removed from the master plan. I would like to see a more interconnected park, which would include the reopening of Miraflores and the removal of parking lots and asphalt roads from the interior of the park. It would be nice to have a running trail (gravel, not pavement) that extends from the Olmos Basin area, south through Brackenridge, and continues southward towards the Pearl area. Would it be possible to clean up the Sunken Gardens and host more community events and concerts at that location? One can only dream.
I’ve given up on the idea of the park being completely rehabilitated during my lifetime, but I hope that future generations will remove the golf course and effectively double the size of the park. San Antonio and its residents deserve better. I love this city, but the way it treats its public space would not be acceptable in most other major cities. Hopefully the Hemisfair redevelopment, the Alamo site enlargement and the Brackenridge upgrades will be a step in the right direction. The city needs to realize that a first-class park space will have a ripple effect upon all of the areas surrounding the park.
Frank, Thank you for the mention of Miraflores. Miraflores does now belong to the City of San Antonio (since 2006), and was adopted by Brackenridge Park. It’s a small jewel, at 4.5 acres, but it contains within it a fascinating expression of Mexican history that should not be overlooked. Its original owner, Dr. Aureliano Urrutia, made important contributions to the field of medicine, and ministered to thousands of San Antonians, most of them hispanic, during his more than 40 year career here, from his downtown office and pharmacy located at Houston and Laredo Streets between the Santa Rosa Hospital and San Pedro Creek. The park contained over 30 objects relating to Mexican history and culture in a unique and mysterious landscape which encouraged exploration and contemplation. Although it was not open to the public, the garden hosted many interesting events including chamber music concerts, and gained the attention of the American Institute of Architects at their annual convention in 1931. It has suffered greatly since it was sold out of the family in the 1960s. Perhaps someday, people might be able to learn something interesting about our important neighbor to the south by visiting Miraflores. https://therivardreport.com/miraflores-dr-urrutias-lost-garden/
http://www.quintaurrutia.com
The Rivard Report does such a great job of providing deeper information and reflection. Perhaps you could run a series on the history of Brackenridge Park; the space as near the headwaters of the San Antonio river. The historical references allow current citizens a glimpse into the park’s storied beginnings, including native American habitation of the surrounding areas.
Shout out to Christina Sohn, featured in photo above. Alamo Heights HS grad ’03. ( I ran cross country with her).
What ever happens, please more field space! Similar to Zilker park – a quality lawn will attract the people for all types of uses. The First Tees driving range is be ripe for this… Also, Bocce courts in the shade!
I hope the planners do not forget us disabled people who can no longer drive a car through the park in order to enjoy it. We need lots of handicapped access for our mobility scooters, wheelchairs, etc. Hardberger foresaw this issue and did something about it. As a native San Antonioian and a long-time visitor (before disability) of the park, I am deeply interested in how the park is treated. Let it be more about nature than about numbers.