DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, as best as Duane can render it. Now, Plaza de Armas in San Antonio — that name alone ought to conjure something, and it does. This was once the site of a colorful open-air market, the kind of place where the whole city brushed shoulders and conducted its business out under the Texas sky.
But by the 1880s, something more permanent was takin' shape on that plaza, and it started with one man and one building. Edward Steves — German-born, city alderman, and owner of a lumber yard — erected the first of what would become a complex of four Victorian commercial structures. He put up that first two-story building in 1880, on a lot sitting right next to the Spanish Governor's Palace.
Not a bad neighbor to have. Then, in 1884, a man named Simon Fest built the adjacent Fashion Theatre. By 1888, Fest had completed two more similar structures alongside it.
Four buildings total, all facing that old plaza, all cut from that particular Victorian commercial ambition that San Antonio was building itself on. Now, limestone facades are a fine thing — elegant, solid, the kind of detail that says a man meant what he built. But in 1891, fire came for two of them.
Destroyed those limestone facades outright. When they rebuilt, they didn't just patch things back together — they came back with more elaborate brick detailing. Sometimes loss has a way of producing something finer than what stood before, though nobody would call that a bargain.
The complex endured, and for a long stretch of time — from 1890 all the way to 1968 — Heusinger Hardware occupied part of the property. Seventy-eight years of hardware on a plaza that once hosted an open-air market. That's not a business, that's a landmark.
And the Fest-Steves Block, standing there on Plaza de Armas, turns out to be exactly that.
What the marker says
This complex of four Victorian commercial structures faces Plaza de Armas, once the site of a colorful open-air market. German-born Edward Steves, A city alderman and lumber yard owner, erected the first of the 2-story buildings in 1880 on a lot next to the Spanish Governor's Palace. In 1884 Simon Fest built the adjacent Fashion Theatre and by 1888 completed two similar structures. Two of the limestone facades were destroyed in an 1891 fire and rebuilt with more elaborate brick detailing. From 1890 to 1968, Heusinger Hardware occupied part of the property. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1977