DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this one, and I promise you, it earns every word. Now, somewhere in Kendall County, there stands a shingle style structure that was built in 1918 for one purpose — to attract bats. Not to frighten anybody.
Not as some eccentric folly. To attract bats, on purpose, as a matter of public health. Let that settle for a moment.
The man behind this idea was Dr. Charles A. R.
Campbell, an authority on bats who had served as the health officer in San Antonio. Dr. Campbell designed this roost for Albert Steves, Sr., a former mayor of that same city.
And Steves, Sr. — a man who clearly had a flair for naming things — called it the Hygieostatic Bat Roost. Say that three times fast on a dusty Texas back road. The thinking was this: bring in the bats, the bats eat the mosquitoes, the mosquitoes stop spreading malaria.
That's the whole chain, and in 1918, malaria was no small concern. Now here's where the story gets a little grander in scope. This wasn't some lone experiment out on one stubborn rancher's land.
Between 1907 and 1929, sixteen of these bat roosts were constructed — not just across the United States, but in Italy as well. Sixteen of them, on two continents. And this shingle style structure in Kendall County is one of that number.
One of sixteen monuments to the idea that sometimes the creature folks spend the most time swatting at and flinching from might just be exactly what you need.
What the marker says
This shingle style structure was built in 1918 to attract and house bats in an effort to eradicate mosquitoes and thereby reduce the spread of malaria. It was designed for Albert Steves, Sr., a former mayor of San Antonio, by Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell, an authority on bats who had served as the health officer in the same city. Named "Hygeiostatic" by Steves, the bat roost is one of 16 constructed in the United States and Italy between 1907 and 1929. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1981