SAH Supports Designation of Institute for Texan Cultures Building as an Antiquities Landmark and Historic Site

The Texas Pavilion / University of Texas San Antonio Institute for Texan Cultures (ITC) Building is a multicultural museum and library operating as a component of The University of Texas at San Antonio. On October 18, 2024, the SAH Heritage Conservation Committee wrote a letter to the Texas Historical Commission bolstering the case for the preservation of  this important landmark. The University has announced that it plans to move the museum’s contents and demolish the building in 2025.

The brutalist building was designed in the 1960s by the major Texas architecture firm Caudill, Rowlett, and Scott (CRS), and the project was led by CRS partner Willie Peña .  Peña, a Mexican American architect, is known for his contributions to the field of architectural programming, which was used to design the Texas Pavilion. While CRS’s contributions to the built environment of Texas are well-known, Peña’s contributions are less so; this is typical of the contributions of Mexican American architects nationwide, as fewer than 4% of the buildings on the National Register of Historic Places have connections to Latino/a/x history.

"This proposed demolition — in the country’s largest Mexican American majority and by the state-supported university system — would remove a building designed during the Civil Rights Movement, by a Mexican American architect, that was intended to represent all of Texas," the Society expressed in their letter, linked below.  

SAH supports its listing as a Texas State Antiquities Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places, which would not only honor the important history of the building and its architect, but it also opens access to historic rehabilitation tax credits, which can be used to leverage creative adaptive reuse of the building.