Main Plaza - Plaza de las Islas

Main Plaza - Plaza de las Islas. , Spanish urban planners in the New World knew how to create a vibrant community: its two interconnected building blocks were a cathedral and a plaza. This spatial structure compelled the citizens of New Spain to revolve around a civic center, timing their movements to the comings and goings of their neighbors with whom they worked, played, and prayed. , The 1730 plan for San Fernando de Bexar (San Antonio) drew on this tradition, beginning with the iglesia, the town’s 18th-century church that later became a cathedral. From its front door, surveyors marked off Plaza de las Islas (Main Plaza) and a set of radiating streets along whose flanks government buildings, stores, and individual housing would be built. The whole plaza was locked in a grid, forming "a cross with the church as a center.” , This circulatory pattern stimulated a robust street life, especially in the plaza. Its open-aired expanse was crowded with religious festivals, political rallies, military formations, and civilian parades. Amid its dust rose the noise of merchants and shoppers haggling and gossiping, of people dancing and mules braying. Plaza de las Islas, this dynamic, intimate, and walking landscape was the city’s communal core until the late 19th-century arrival of streetcars, which started pulling people away from the plaza. ,