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Kitsch and Culture in San AntonioBy Sharon McDonnell
The Buckhorn, an only-in-Texas mix of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Ripley's Believe It or Not, began humbly enough. When Albert Friedrich opened the Buckhorn Saloon in 1881, he allowed cowboys and hunters to trade horns and antlers for a beer or shot of whiskey. After his wife, Emile, urged him to diversify, rattlesnake rattlers were added to the barter. She fashioned "art" and signs out of the rattlers -- a masterpiece was a picture of a deer made from 637 rattlers. Friedrich's fondness for horns appeared to be a family trait: his father created furniture from horns for clients from Queen Victoria to the German Kaiser Wilhelm I, and provided some for the saloon. One (ouch!) chair is crafted from 62 sets of horns from American bison
The Lone Star Brewing Company bought the Buckhorn collection in 1956, and housed it for about 40 years in a separate building built on brewery grounds. Besides the famous "Hall of Horns," Lone Star added a "Hall of Fins," "Hall of Feathers" and wax museum of Texas history it created for the World's Fair during the 1960's and 1970's. It even began brewing a Buckhorn beer in 1972. The Friedrich family managed to buy the collection back and keep it in San Antonio in 1998, after Lone Star closed and new owner Stroh's Beer moved Lone Star brewing operations to Longview, Texas. Friedrich's grand-daughter, Mary Friedrich Rogers, her husband, Wallace Rogers, and her in-laws re-opened the new Buckhorn Saloon & Museum in December, 1998 on Houston Street. Only a few blocks from its first location, the Buckhorn is just two blocks from The Alamo, San Antonio's most famous attraction -- the 18th century Spanish mission where 189 Texan volunteers, including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, were slaughtered by the Mexican army in 1836. With the battle cry "Remember the Alamo," Texas gained its independence from Mexico after resoundingly defeat its army less than two months later. After being an independent nation for nine years, Texas became a state.
The Buckhorn also hosts rotating exhibits -- dinosaurs and fossils were here during my visit this spring -- and caters events for up to 1,900 people in a 6,500-foot upstairs room. If your taste leans more to culture than kitsch, a museum housing the nation's largest permanent collection of Latin American art -- plus the South's biggest collection of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman art -- has a beer-related history as well. The San Antonio Museum of Art is located in the original home of the Lone Star Brewery, which dates back to 1884. Resembling a medieval fortress with Romanesque-inspired towers and turrets, the brew house was converted into the museum, while seven other buildings were restored for offices and storage when the museum opened in 1981. While Adolphus Busch of Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association was a principal owner of the brewery for 20 years, the company was re-organized several times, and the brewery became home to the Lmone Star Cotton Mills in the 1920's. The San Antonio Museum Association became interested in the buildings, in need of repair from disuse, in the early 1970's, due to their downtown location. The spectacular Latin American collection spans over 4,000 years in Mexico, Central and South America, and opened in 1998. Its vast range includes artworks from pre-Columbian times -- such as Asian-looking infant sculptures by Mexico's Olmecs, and ceramic and stone objects by the Aztecs -- Spanish Colonial art, and folk art donated by Nelson Rockefeller's family from the 18th century to the present. An outstanding Asian collection of art, sculptures and ceramics, ranging from China, India to Southeast Asia and from the Neolithic period to early 20th century is here as well. So is modern American art, with works by Frank Stella and Helen Frankenthaler, European art from the 12th to 20th centuries, and its newest exhibit, featuring aboriginal art from the South Pacific, from Australia, New Zealand, to Polynesia. For more information, contact The Buckhorn Saloon & Museum at 210-247-4004 or www.buckhornmuseum.com (open daily until 5:00 or 6:00 PM, $9.99 admission for adults, group discounts), and San Antonio Museum of Art at 210-978-8100 or www.sa-museum.org (open daily except Monday, $6 admission for adults). --Sharon McDonnell welcomes travel story ideas; reach her at sharonfmc@compuserve.com. |
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Few bars have a collection of over
1,200 mounted animal heads, a two-headed calf, and three shrunken heads made
by South American tribes. But the Buckhorn Saloon & Museum in San Antonio,
Texas does.
When Prohibition began in 1920, the
clever Friedrich switched gears and opened the Buckhorn Curio Museum. Tens
of thousands of armadillo baskets and rattlesnake ties, among the
best-sellers, were sold by its shop. He also placed an adult-sized gorilla
in the front window in 1922, which became a popular meeting place in
downtown San Antonio. When a competitor closed, Friderich acquired his
collection -- including the world's biggest longhorn steer mount, "Old
Tex," whose horn spread is an astonishing 8 feet, nine inches -- and became
the horn and antler champion nonpareil. After the repeal of Prohibition, the
bar was revived; many vaudeville stars became patrons, since a theater's
rear entrance was across the street.
Today, at the original cherrywood bar
you can order a Lone Star or a Shiner Bock, brewed in Shiner, Texas, under
the watchful eyes of so many animal heads and a standing bear with an
unfriendly expression you feel as if you're in the Wild West. Steak,
including the chicken-fried variety, hamburgers, club sandwiches and Mexican
platters are served in the restaurant. Drink in hand, you can tour exhibits
and dioramas of 520 different animal species, thanks to the wonders of
taxidermy -- not only antlers, horns and freaks of nature like the
two-headed calf and eight-legged lamb, but lions, rhinos, elephants, sharks,
and a 1,056-pound marlin. The woolly mammoth head copy near the entrance the
manager bought, of course, on Ebay, and is made of resin and steel wool, I'm
told.