You are here

Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast » South Central Texas » San Antonio (Bexar County) » Downtown San Antonio » U.S. Post Office and Courthouse

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse

-A A +A
1937, Ralph Cameron with Paul P. Cret, consulting architect. 615 E. Houston St.
  • (Photograph by Gerald Moorhead )
  • (Photograph by Gerald Moorhead)

For its date, this federal building was an unusually monumental neoclassical design, perhaps out of respect to the adjacent Alamo. It recalls Cret's work at the University of Texas at Austin ( AU41) where he also adopted a modern version of Spanish-inflected classicism. The monumental in antis Ionic colonnade at the second story gives depth to what would have otherwise been a rather boxlike mass. A six-foot-tall mural, San Antonio's Importance in Texas History (1939) by Howard Cook, wraps the lobby. It is the largest of the 106 works placed in sixty-nine post offices throughout Texas that were produced during the Great Depression by the Section of Fine Arts of the Public Works Administration (PWA).

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
×

Data

What's Nearby

Emily Morgan Hotel (Medical Arts Building)
Alamo Cenotaph
San Antonio Express News Building
The Alamo
Crockett Block

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "U.S. Post Office and Courthouse", [San Antonio, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-01-SA8.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 148-148.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,