2026-09-29T23:29:35+00:00 Zend_Feed_Writer https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org/ Rattlers Remember https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org 2019-12-14T08:12:59+00:00 2019-12-16T16:55:33+00:00 https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org/items/show/35 Mario Sosa In the early 1970s, there were a growing number of men wanting to become Marianist brothers. At this time, St. Mary’s University had the brothers living in Charles Francis, but it only had 60 rooms, all of which were occupied. In response to the growing number of Marianists, the university constructed Treadaway Hall to accommodate 200 brothers. Marianists from the St. Louis Province of the United States were responsible for financing Treadaway. Perhaps the most recognizable feature in Treadaway Hall is its slanted windows. By having the windows tilted at an angle, people looking in from the outside cannot see much. The reasoning for designing the windows this way was so that residents would not have to place blinds or curtains up. The rooms each have a bed, a desk, and a sink with a vanity, mirror, and a medicine cabinet to compliment it. To ensure that the design would be efficient, one of the brothers responsible for creating the rooms, Gene Myer, built a model room right next to where Casa Maria is today before starting constructing the rooms in Treadaway. The model room stayed up until it was taken down not too long ago since the Brothers had no use for it. On the first floor was a dining hall that was able to feed all the brothers living there. The building also had room for an auto shop built in the basement. In regards to the basic structure of Treadaway hall, Brother Richard Dix explained that since Treadaway Hall was for Marianist men, the walls and ceilings were made with bare concrete to appear masculine. Concrete piers that are dug down around 30 to 40 feet support the building. However, the usage of caliche cement, a sedimentary rock made of gravel and sand, has shown to be problematic. In one instance, when one of the water pipes came apart under Treadaway, the caliche on the piers got wet. This resulted in the concrete expanding and essentially started lifting the entire building off of the pillars. To remedy the problem, the school had to dig up several feet of dirt. Jim Jakely was a brother who almost single handedly dug up the dirt. By the early 1980s, only about 30 brothers were living on the fourth floor of Treadaway. Since most of the rooms were vacant, the Marianists relocated the remaining brothers and gave the building over to the university. Since then, much of Treadaway has been redesigned. While the chapel in Treadaway remained intact since its conception, the dining hall became the music department, the auto shop turned into the police department, the machine shop room converted into housekeeping and storage, the kitchen changed into the mailroom and the recreational room transformed into the English Communication Arts area. Today, Treadaway hall is still used as a dormitory for students. Despite the small room size, many students enjoy the privacy of one person rooms. Students there tend to get loft beds so that they could have extra room for a TV or other furniture below. While no longer a dormitory for the brothers, Treadaway hall is still considered a part of home to those residing at St. Mary’s University. For more (including 4 images and 2 sound clips), view the original article. 2019-12-07T18:25:02+00:00 2019-12-16T15:52:22+00:00 https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org/items/show/20 Antonio Coffee The Marianists operated Saint Mary’s Institute downtown, but they needed more room and built a second location away from downtown.The Marianists built Saint Louis College in 1894 as their solution. They continued to operate both of these locations. Marianist brothers actively contributed to the construction of the building. They spent their time working on the building to help ensure that construction went well. The Marianists showed their commitment to the university from the beginning. A lot of the building materials came from local sources because it is cheaper to move from short distances. The base of the building is made out of limestone and if one looks closely, they can see small fossils in the limestone from small ocean creatures. When Saint Louis College opened in 1894 Saint Louis existed as the only building on campus. It housed classrooms, administrative offices, student lodging, the dining hall, the chapel, and lodging for the Marianists. St Louis existed far from anything else. It was isolated from most of San Antonio. To get to Saint Louis College, you would have needed to get a buggy to drive you from the bottom of the hill at Woodlawn to the top of the hill where Saint Louis sat. Slowly Saint Louis College expanded and added new buildings to campus. Eventually the name changed, in 1927, to Saint Mary’s University, but the original building kept the name Saint Louis. At this point some of the duties of Saint Louis shifted to other buildings. Classrooms were added to Reinbolt, and student housing moved to Chaminade. This trend continued and now Saint Louis houses mainly administrative offices vital to the university’s operations. It still houses some classes, mainly on the third floor. Most of the classes held today in Saint Louis are political science classes. Besides being associated with administrative purposes, Saint Louis symbolizes graduation and tradition on campus today.Most students take their graduation pictures in front of Saint Louis and the doors that are there. According to tradition, students are not supposed to walk out the doors of Saint Louis until they graduate. Campus myth status that if a student walks out the doors before graduation, they will fail to graduate on time. The walk out of the front doors are a major part of the graduation ceremony. Also, the image of Saint Louis is also engraved on the graduation ring. These traditions related to Saint Louis celebrate the graduation of St. Mary’s students. It is one of the most beautiful buildings on the campus and it is the first thing that a person notices when heading to the front of the university. Being the oldest building on campus, the image of Saint Louis is used on a lot of marketing materials and designs for the school. For many alumni it symbolizes their time at Saint Mary’s and is the first thing they think of. Saint Louis will continue to be a symbol of tradition for students and alumni alike. For more (including 3 images and 2 sound clips), view the original article. 2019-12-07T17:21:38+00:00 2019-12-16T15:53:32+00:00 https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org/items/show/19 Antonio Coffee For many, the bell tower symbolizes graduation. It is engraved on the ring that students may buy to show they are an alumnus of St. Mary’s. Anyone that knows Saint Mary’s will recognize it instantly, for those unfamiliar with the campus, it is the first thing they will notice. It is a center of social and spiritual life for many students on campus. Surprisingly, however, the Bell Tower is a fairly recent addition to Saint Mary’s. On February 9, 2007 Saint Mary’s held a dedication ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of the Bell Tower. Many people attended the ceremony,  including Charles T. and Melissa Barrett, who gave the initial donation of $500,000 that made the creation of the Bell Tower possible. This is around half of the total cost of the tower.. Charles graduated from Saint Mary’s in 1962 before he became a member of the Board of Trustees. He helped create the Bell Tower to serve as a memorial for his mother and his son who had recently passed away. The tower is dedicated to the memory of both of them. Charles and Melissa hoped the Bell Tower would become an iconic gathering point for students on campus. Saint Mary’s emphasizes community and the campus was missing this kind of central gathering place. Every Wednesday at three p.m. students gather to say the Marianist three o’clock prayer around the Bell Tower. Throughout the year, there are also events where students will gather to eat food and share in community with each other. Every year the university decorates it for the tree lighting ceremony, sororities use it during bid day, and many students take pictures with it for social media. Saint Mary’s started talking about the creation of a Bell Tower in the 1960s, and the University has looked for a way to create one since then. This Bell Tower is unique in that it does not have physical bell, but instead it has an electronic chime installed that rings at noon, 3PM, and 6PM. It rings at these times as a call to daily mass and three o’clock prayer. The Bell Tower still has a bell installed, but it is just for looks.  The construction of the Bell Tower took around a year to complete and had its bumps in the road. At one point the construction workers accidently hit a power line and created an outage on half of campus. The construction also upset some students as it made it harder for them to get to class. Despite these issues during construction, the Bell Tower is now an iconic feature of Saint Mary’s. The Bell Tower stands proud and tall watching over campus and remaining a symbol for those who come here. For more (including 3 images and 2 sound clips), view the original article. 2019-05-04T21:39:06+00:00 2019-05-08T01:16:38+00:00 https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org/items/show/11 Pierre John Gutierrez Jr In 1966 Treadaway Hall was built as a space the Marianist brothers could use on the St. Mary’s University campus. Although it was on university grounds, the entirety of Treadaway belonged to the Marianist brothers, and the school did not actually own it. The lower levels included a lab, a foundry, and an art room. The art room would later become Calderon Hall. Eventually, the brothers realized they didn’t need Treadaway anymore since they were no longer receiving as many brothers as they were in previous years so they sold the building to St. Mary’s in 1978. St. Mary’s University is also home to a Reserve Officer Training Corps program which is a part of the US Army and commissions cadets as 2nd Lieutenants upon graduation. At the time, the ROTC commissioned only Field Artillery officers and even had a pair of Howitzer artillery pieces on campus that they would occasionally take to Camp Bullis to practice shooting with. The ROTC had previously occupied a smaller building that was close to Treadaway nearby to where the glass garden house is today. This building was called Seng Hall and was named after Colonel Seng who was one of the professors of military science for St. Mary’s. However, once the school was in possession of Treadaway, Seng Hall was torn down and they allowed the ROTC to move into part of the lower levels of Treadaway giving them an equipment area, instructor offices, and a classroom.. The Treadaway classroom was named in honor of a former cadet, Orlando B. Calderon, who was tragically killed during his senior year at St. Mary’s. Orlando Calderon was an avid supporter of the Rattler Battalion’s Marian Guard Drill Team and would often accompany them wherever they performed. One night in the December of 1968, while coming back home from an event in Houston, Calderon was killed in a single vehicle accident. In order to honor his memory the Rattler Battalion decided to name the classroom after him as well as present an annual award to a high performing senior cadet that holds his name as well. Nowadays, Calderon Hall still acts as the main classroom for ROTC cadets and a picture of him accompanied by a small printout about him accompanies it. Near the Professor of Military Science’s office, there is a sword representing the Orlando B. Calderon award along with a list of all its awardees. For more (including 2 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article. 2019-05-03T00:49:28+00:00 2019-05-08T01:16:38+00:00 https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org/items/show/7 Euris Y. Morales The Marianist Cemetery is a landmark on St. Mary’s University campus where brothers of the Marianist faith are buried. The site was created in the early 1900s and has experienced very few changes in over a century. Each gravestone in this site is identical in appearance to the first one placed so as to maintain the unity expressed in the Marianist spirit that is central to the university. Amongst the brothers buried in the cemetery, there are some buried who were not brothers but earned burial here by meeting outstanding requirements. In the first row, there are people who have contributed to St. Mary’s for their entire lives, and with special permission, they were allowed to be buried in the cemetery despite not being brothers. Brother Jim Jaeckle is the brother in charge of most things regarding the cemetery, and these responsibilities range from the logistics of managing the cemetery to burying the brothers himself using only his trusty hand-tools and his fierce resolve. Every gravestone is a fine white marble that is cut to a precise dimension before being sent to the university campus. During 1986, San Antonio experienced one of its worst snowstorms in history, and it all happened when Brother Jim had to bury a brother. Through 13 inches of snow, a job had to be done, and Brother Jim was the man for it. He recalls, “It was a beautiful thing to see, but a mess to deal with.” Afterward, Brother Jim had to deal with the melted snow and the great amount of mud that came with it all in a day’s work. The Marianist Cemetery is not only a burial site for brothers of the faith but also a place where one can find peace and comfort. Every brother interviewed said the same thing, the cemetery is a place where men have devoted their lives to the faith, and so remembering the lives of these men has created an aura of peacefulness and rest surrounding it. From the early 1900s to today, the Marianist Cemetery will always remain a paramount landmark of St. Mary’s University For more (including 5 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article. 2019-04-30T18:40:21+00:00 2019-05-08T01:16:38+00:00 https://rattlersremember.stmupublichistory.org/items/show/4 Peter Coons The discrete, small white house located in Pecan Grove, known as the Marianist Heritage House, is the oldest building on the campus of St. Mary’s University. Built sometime before the school moved from its original location downtown to its current location in 1852, this house was used by the farmer who owned the property. Although its original purpose is unknown; however, a building is a building, and the new tenants of the land would make use of anything they could. After St. Mary’s moved onto this land, it was in dire need of structures to teach classes because St. Louis Hall served primarily as dormitory. Not one to waste what they’ve been given, the faculty of the university utilized the Marianist Heritage House and other similar structures as the first lecture halls while more permanent structures were constructed. As the university expanded its facilities throughout the 1900s, the small farm houses fell out of use as St. Mary’s adopted larger surplus portable military barracks that could accommodate more students. By the 1950s, two farm houses remained on campus. One was situated by the quad and the other was in Pecan Grove. The house by the quad was deconstructed as the area expanded, and it was eventually paved over, leaving only the house in Pecan Grove. From the 1920 to the 1950s, it served as the private residence, office and classroom of Brother Frank Zirnheld, S.M. until his death in 1955. For the majority of its existence, the Heritage House was used as a science and mathematics classroom. While primarily a science classroom, the house was split into two rooms, a classroom in the front and a lab in the back. However, this ended when Garni Science Hall was completed with the expansion of the School of Science in 1951 (By then, Brother Zirnheld had retired from teaching.). The house became an office space for staff without offices. From the 1980s to the 1990s, Father George Montague had his office in the front half of the building. In the back, another brother used the space to compile the course catalogues until computers made the old practice of printing them on paper by hand obsolete. In 1995, after Father Montague retired from teaching, the university decided to retire the house and formally designate it a landmark on campus. In a ceremony celebrating the rich history the house has had traveling around campus and serving as a classroom for the Marianists, St. Mary’s commemorated it officially as the Marianist Heritage House. Today, the house is occasionally used as an impromptu storage building. During the annual Fiesta celebration in San Antonio, Pecan Grove becomes the center of the campus during Oyster Bake, with the Heritage House serving as a silent reminder of the school’s long history here in the city. For more (including 2 images and 1 sound clip), view the original article.