King William Neighborhood

Emma Altgelt, wife of the street's namer, came to Texas alone at twenty. Born at Barmen, Prussia, in 1833, she trained in Liège to teach German and English and sailed from Bremen on the Franziska in 1854. In Comfort she ran the town school in her home. After the family moved to San Antonio they lived briefly in the neglected Spanish Governor's Palace, which Ernst Altgelt had bought and tried to renovate, before moving into their house on King William Street. Widowed in 1878, she lived forty-four more years, studied Spanish and traveled in Mexico.

What the plaque says

King William Neighborhood The King William neighborhood is located on the former farmlands of Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo). The 216-acre area, less than one mile from the former mission, includes two National Register districts. It is bounded generally by Cesar Chavez Blvd. on the north, Eagleland St. on the south, St. Marys St. on the east, and the San Antonio River on the west. When the Spanish Government secularized the mission in 1793 the fertile fields with access to abundant water were distributed to local residents. Farming continued until the mid-1800s when the area was subdivided. Houses were built beginning in the 1850s and construction increased after the Civil War. New residents included many Germans who came to Texas to escape political and economic turmoil. The community received its name in about 1866 when Ernst and Emma Altgelt built their home on an unnamed street that they called King William after Wilhelm I of Prussia. The largely German neighborhood grew and diversified as San Antonios population increased over the coming decades. New residents included upper and middle class Mexicans who crossed the border because of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. The neighborhood encompasses the most diverse and intact collection of architecture in San Antonio. Stone, brick and frame structures in the Gothic Revival, Italianate, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne and Craftsman styles date from 1858 to 1962. The neighborhood exemplifies San Antonios social, economic and architectural development from the Antebellum period through the Post-World War II era. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• King William Historic District — 0.3 mi
  Mission farmland turned German merchants' quarter on the San Antonio River, renamed in World War I, then saved by a neighbor who restored fourteen houses, starting with his own.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.4 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.
• La Villita Historic Arts Village — 0.4 mi
  The little village across the river from the presidio, where Cos surrendered San Antonio in 1835, rebuilt by Depression-era youth crews as a working crafts village.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 0.5 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.

More markers nearby

• Don Jose Miguel de Arciniega — steps away
• Guenther's Upper Mill, Site of — steps away
• El Quartel (El Cuartel) — 0.3 mi
• John W. Smith — 0.3 mi