Second of two columns
Last Sunday’s column tackled the origin story of the train in Joske’s parking lot, sometimes advertised as the “ginormous parking lot at Blum and Bonham streets.” After World War II, the department store over the years bought up property in back of its Alamo Plaza flagship store, eventually devouring a neighborhood that included 19th-century adobe and part-adobe structures.
Joske’s purchased the Plaza Theater at Alamo and Blum and demolished it in 1938, as well as “all of the Blum Street side and surrounding areas that could be used to meet the growing parking problem and the remainder of the Joske’s square block, except the ground occupied by St. Joseph’s (Catholic) Church,” says Lois Wood Burkhalter in “The Enjoyable Joske’s Story,” a supplement to the San Antonio Light, April 15, 1973. “These latter purchases included a city street (St. Joseph’s) that bisected the block and a church school (also St. Joseph’s).”…