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I moved back into my Mockingbird Hill home about 10 years ago, but baby photos of me in this house with my great-grandfather show that my history with the home goes back even further than I can remember.
Because of my mother’s love for travel, I lived in different parts of the world — including Japan, Mexico and Africa — but San Antonio was always our home base. I remember an old abandoned home at the end of Tupelo Lane that people believed was haunted. Kids from all over San Antonio, myself included, would go and dare each other to spend time there. I remember summers spent at Spurs Camp and especially Christmases with the whole family.
The Christmas tree was always in the same corner of the living room — where we still put it up to this day. We’d play the piano and sing Christmas carols, then all the kids would sit in the stairway waiting for the adults to say it was time to open presents. Before us, my mom and her sister did the same thing, and every generation since has carried on the tradition. That’s what’s so special about this home. It holds all the memories and traditions of generations of our family.
My great-grandfather had this home built in 1937, before Mockingbird Hill was even a neighborhood. It was the third home built here, after the Denman Estate and another home on the corner of Chambers Road and Pleasure Hill Drive. And it was designed by San Antonio architect Atlee Ayres, who designed the Atkinson-McNay House, the Freeman Coliseum and the Smith-Young Tower, now known as the Tower Life Building.
My great-grandfather and Leroy Denman were both attorneys and, being both colleagues and neighbors, the Denman family and my family became friends. Later, Gilbert Denman Jr., Leroy Denman’s grandson, having never married or had children, left his property to the San Antonio Museum of Art and Trinity University when he died. The property was then to be sold to Dallas developers planning to build condominiums, but the neighborhood came together to prevent that from happening.
I actually spurred that effort by circulating a petition to stop the sale. We worked with then-Councilman Art Hall to reach a compromise with the entities that owned the property in which the city purchased the land to establish the area as a park, while still allowing them to use the buildings. Thanks to our neighbors coming together and attending many, many city council meetings, we have Denman Estate Park today.
Now the park is the core of the neighborhood, where you’ll often run into neighbors — and where residents from other parts of the city come to find a bit of peace. The neighborhood association recently started concerts in the park with the support of Councilman Manny Pelaez’s office, which has been a great way to bring people together to enjoy the park.
I’ve been part of the Mockingbird Hill Neighborhood Association for three years now, the first two years as vice president and now as president. Through the neighborhood association and collaboration with other area neighborhood associations and homeowners associations, we’ve worked to maintain the character of the area. Though we started seeing more homes built in the ‘70s, and there’s been a lot of development in surrounding areas, we like to think of the neighborhood immediately adjacent to Denman Estate Park as an enclave in the city that still retains some country charm.
When I moved into this home about a decade ago, I wanted to start fixing up the house while still keeping its history and character. My mother and grandmother had been living in the home but didn’t have the means to keep it up. Over the years, I’ve been able to slowly but surely get the home looking more like it did back in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
As I’ve been renovating the home room by room, I’ve kept certain details as reminders of the past. There’s a bottle opener on one of the doors that goes back about 70 years, a built-in ironing board and even an old phone. When I redid the kitchen for my mother for Christmas about three years ago, I left one part of the wall untouched. That wall is where every child in the family since my mom had had their height measured and it shows all the generations — including cousins — who have come through this house.
My sister and her family now live in the Boerne area and they come over often for family dinners. My daughter and her family just came over for their first visit ever. Seeing my three grandkids in this house really took me back to when I was one of the grandkids visiting the house, running up and down the stairs and finding all the little nooks and crannies. It doesn’t even feel like that long ago, and now my own grandkids are exploring the house just like I did.
One of the criteria with me as I become that older generation is to make sure that the family knows that they have a place to come home to at any time, no notice needed. It’s always been that way since I’ve known it.
