Mission Concepción: Cultural Landscape Inventory, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, National Park Service
James and Juarez, Contractor. 2013. Mission Concepción: Cultural Landscape Inventory, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, National Park Service. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 850148. NPS Intermountain Regional Office. Intermountain Regional Office/CLI Database
Mission Concepción is a component landscape of the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park in San Antonio, Texas. It is the northernmost of the four missions established between 1718 and 1731. Mission Concepción has contributed significantly to broad patterns of history related to San Antonio, Texas, the American Southwest, and the entire nation. Mission Concepción was established in 1731 along the east bank of the San Antonio River as part of the Spanish colonial frontier system in the region. Originally known as Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña, Mission Concepción is one of the missions included in the San Antonio Missions National Register Historic District, and the mission church is a National Historic Landmark. Although urban development has claimed much of the original land, the core of the mission complex has survived. The historic church and related buildings, as well as the surrounding landscape, continue to support an active parish and thousands of visitors each year. The period of significance for the cultural landscape is 1731-1978, beginning with the settlement of Mission Concepción and ending with the year that the National Park Service (NPS) began administering the site. The mission contributes to the general understanding of the role of missions in Spanish-colonial settlement of the American Southwest and, more specifically, in the San Antonio region. Mission Concepción is significant in areas of agriculture, architecture, archeology, religion, community planning and development, and social history. As an individual property, Mission Concepción has significant associations with Spanish colonial history, regional architectural design and landscape design patterns, Spanish-colonial decorative arts, and archeological resources of the Spanish-colonial period. Mission Concepción reflects the design characteristics of an eighteenth-century Spanish-colonial mission landscape. Existing characteristics such as proximity to the river, the distinct spatial organization of the core historic site, and the agricultural, engineering, and irrigation techniques are directly related to the cultural landscape. The mission is an exceptionally well-preserved and largely unaltered example of a Spanish-colonial mission church, convento, sacristy, and baptistery; portions of the site predate and provide precedents for Spanish-colonial architecture in California. Mission Concepción possesses especially well-preserved examples of decorative painted plaster and carved stone details, and has particular significance as one of the earliest known extant examples of mission decorative arts in the American Southwest. Additionally, the mission reflects the architectural and landscape architectural design skills of those involved in the post-secularization restoration of the mission, which occured throughout the 1900s.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- James and Juarez, Contractor
- Date of Issue
- 2013-05-13
- Publisher
- NPS Intermountain Regional Office
- Units
- IMR , SAAN
- Keywords
- Agriculture, American Southwest, Archeology, Architecture, Baptistry, Bexar County, church, Coahuiltecan Native Americans, Colonial architecture, Community Planning and Development, convento, Decorative arts, Engineering, Ethnographic/Traditional Landscape, Exploration and Settlement, Historic Preservation Movement, historic site, Irrigation, Landscape architecture, Mexican, Mission Concepcion, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña, National Historic Landmark, Regional planning, Religion, Restoration, Sacristy, San Antonio, San Antonio River, secularization, Social History, Spanish, Spanish-Colonial History, Subsistence Agriculture, Texas, The 1930s: Era of Public Works, Vernacular Landscape