Overview

This coffee table book displays more than 100 rarely seen images to bring to life the frontier era of one of America’s most unusual cities, seen through its Spanish plazas. Colorful iconic paintings and drawings mix with 19th century photographic stereoviews and cabinet cards, cropped for impact and appearing with their original subtle tonings. As San Antonio’s frontier era was ending in the 1870s and 1880s, Military Plaza by day was a vivid outdoor market. By night it was a crowded dining venue where storied chili queens dished out spicy meals while saloons and fandango halls pulsed nearby. A cathedral dating from 1738 faced Main Plaza, where Apache chieftains and Spaniards once buried a hatchet, a lance, six arrows and a horse to signify peace. On Alamo Plaza, a demonstration of how barbed wire constrained a herd of cattle changed the course of the American West. Its plazas were the heart of San Antonio since its earliest days on the remote northern frontier of New Spain. Not long after a railroad—in 1877—at last provided easy access to the rest of the nation, rapid growth made San Antonio start looking more like cities elsewhere. Chili Queens, Hay Wagons and Fandangos allows us to picture the earlier, more colorful time. Illustrations are accompanied by descriptive captions and a concise narrative.

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9781595346711

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Reviews

The greatest strength of the book is the rarely seen photographs and artwork that bring the plazas to life. Fisher illustrates the book with views of the plazas and their people, as seen through the lenses of the scores of photographers who chronicled life in frontier San Antonio, as well as paintings by fine artists such as Theodore Gentilz and folk artists such as Charles Herff, whose eyewitness watercolor of the desperado Bob Augustine's hanging from a chinaberry tree in Military Plaza in 1861 is fascinating. -- San Antonio Express-News

"""The greatest strength of the book is the rarely seen photographs and artwork that bring the plazas to life. Fisher illustrates the book with views of the plazas and their people, as seen through the lenses of the scores of photographers who chronicled life in frontier San Antonio, as well as paintings by fine artists such as Theodore Gentilz and folk artists such as Charles Herff, whose eyewitness watercolor of the desperado Bob Augustine's hanging from a chinaberry tree in Military Plaza in 1861 is fascinating."" -- San Antonio Express-News"

Author Information

Celebrated San Antonio historian Lewis F. Fisher, whose Maverick Publishing Company was acquired by Trinity University Press in 2015, has published forty-five books on topics ranging from San Antonio's Spanish heritage to its urban development, and from the military to sports, architecture, and multicultural legends. A former member of the San Antonio River Commission, he has written numerous books himself, including Chili Queens, Hay Wagons, and Fandangos: The Spanish Plazas in Frontier San Antonio, winner of the 2015 San Antonio Conservation Society Publication Award, and Saving San Antonio: The Preservation of a Heritage, republished in a second edition, and Maverick: The American Name That Became a Legend. Fisher has received numerous local, state, and national writing awards and was named a Texas Preservation Hero by the Conservation Society in 2014.

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