A new facility now open on the Alamo grounds is about to change up the classic rite of passage a student field trip to the shrine of Texas liberty brings.
The Texas Cavaliers Education Center at the Alamo, a state-of-the-art building featuring an auditorium and classroom space, is nearly complete and ready to welcome this year’s summer campers and teacher workshops.
When fully up and running, it is expected to serve 250,000 school-aged children a year.
Situated behind the Alamo Church, the center opened recently as the second of three new buildings to open at the historic site.
With clear views through expansive windows of the rear of the church, the facility is an adaptive reuse of the former events and meeting space, Alamo Hall, that originally served as the city’s second fire station.
The $36.8 million center on state-owned property was designed, constructed and furnished through private donations, including $5 million from the Texas Cavaliers, a charitable organization that supports children’s causes.
The San Antonio architecture firm WestEast Design Group provided design services for the project.
The education center, its terrazzo floors designed as a map of the San Antonio River and historic missions, features an orientation theater with tiered seating for 100 where students can watch an introductory video featuring Alamo staff.
In classrooms and a lab space, students are able to connect with 300 years of
Alamo history, plus art and science, from archaeology and architecture to physics and botany.
“That’s the first goal of the Alamo Plan — preserve our two remaining historic structures,” said Director of Education Alex Rivard, one of the 10-member education department at the Alamo.
“So there’s a ton of lessons there that are maybe outside of your traditional secondary Texas history classroom lesson that we’ve seen a huge demand for from our teacher community,” he said.
A historically accurate Lego model of the Battle of 1836 made with 50,000 Lego by brickmaster Adam Bell is on display along with “Texas Tree of Life,” a massive piece of art designed with oil paint on carved birch plywood by artist Ricky Armendariz. A reading nook is stocked with books and comfortable furnishings.
“This is a space that we anticipate doing a lot of that STEAM education,” said Kate Carey, vice president of education at the Alamo. “We have used it for a teacher workshop. We will use it for summer camp. It’s again a flexible space … where we can engage with a variety of different touch points.”
For students who can’t travel to the Alamo, a distance learning studio provides live broadcasts to schools, and for children under age 5, there’s also an early learners hub with a small outdoor space.
Outside the center, a gathering space created under a century-old oak tree sits next to a rebuilt Crockett fountain, and water flowing through an irrigation acequia feeds vegetable gardens planted with peppers, basil and tomatoes.
A communal adobe oven was built with support from the local chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier to allow for cooking demonstrations.
“Exploring food ways, whether or not it’s how San Antonians hundreds of years ago grew their food, or how they cooked it, we’ll be able to do all that with students,” Rivard said.
Design consideration also was given to how students arrive at the Alamo. Now when they step off school buses, kids and teachers safely enter the grounds along Crockett Street directly, without having to cross any streets, where they pass a majestic oak and rainwater capture gardens into the center.
Aaron Johnson, who teaches U.S. history for local middle and high school students, visited the center recently as a member of the Alamo’s educator advisory council.
The Alamo isn’t “just a field trip destination,” he said. “It can make lifelong memories that can change a student’s trajectory. Being able to interact with history, in the actual location where it took place, is unique. The chapel has always been iconic; now it’s a centerpiece to a much bigger story.”
The education center project, a key piece of the larger $500 million Alamo Plan, was expected to be complete in early 2023.
But the added work involved in preservation, including matching floor tiles from the 1930s-era Works Progress Administration in the old hall, contributed to construction delays, Rivard said.
Meanwhile, opposite the Alamo Church, two cranes hover over the construction site for the planned Alamo visitor center and museum.
State officials and Alamo Trust leaders, including the recently ousted executive director Kate Rogers, broke ground on the project in October 2024.
The final beam was installed in late March and the museum is expected to open in 2028. Hope Andrade now serves as the president and CEO of the Alamo Trust.
A complete redesign of Alamo Plaza, the promenade and paseo has brought a mission gate and lunette and pedestrian improvements to the area.
The adjacent Ralston Family Collections Center at the Alamo, which opened in 2023, marked its 1 millionth visitor on Tuesday, a couple from Florida, said a spokeswoman.
Rivard marvels at the difference in the Alamo experience from when he took a field trip there in 1995.
“To think about the difference in the experience that I had … literally watching a holographic version of James Bowie at one of the tourist attractions across the street, versus what we’re doing now, which is way more substantive, accessible for all students, regardless of where they’re coming from or their background, but also historically accurate, is really special,” he said.
The education center is open for school groups by reservation only.
