St. Charles district was city's first “growth” area

It was a case of the living dead Saturday, as Brownsville’s bygone history came to life on a tour through one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.

The St. Charles district, a term used by volunteer guide Anthony Knopp, was showcased in 17 different stops on a walking tour organized by the Brownsville Historical Association.

It was the third time Knopp had done a tour of the blocks around St. Charles Street, but he said it was the first time Sacred Heart Catholic Church was featured.

The residential blocks around there could be considered the first area of growth for the city officially founded in 1853 but with a history extending long before.

“This was the first area outside of what I would call Downtown Brownsville,” said Knopp, who is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Texas Brownsville and Texas Southmost College and a former president of the Brownsville Historical Association.

The group has hosted tours for several years but this time is featuring new content, he said.

“It gives you a look at a part of town people don’t get to see,” Knopp said. “An awful lot of people don’t make it to downtown. Their lives are confined to the area north of Boca Chica.”

Seeing the sites

A group of about 10 sightseers and local history buffs met at the Old City Cemetery Center for Saturday’s walk, learning about the monuments in Washington Park, the first school built where Putegnat Elementary now stands, Brownsville’s first hospital, and the various family ties that turned the city into what it is today.

Tour groups are diverse, Knopp said, but the walks often draw those residing just for the winter.

An added benefit to the tours, he noted, is that Brownsville’s connection to Matamoros can be emphasized but from the safety of the United States.

The drug cartel violence that has plagued Matamoros is a problem, he said.

“It used to be an attraction,” Knopp said. “There’s important history and the physical evidence of that is still around. ... If we’re going to get some kind of tourism, this seems to be a way to focus on it.”

Mary Beyer and her husband, Brad, were among Saturday’s tourgoers.

The two, from Wisconsin, have come to Brownsville every winter for the past four years, following in the footsteps of family members before them.

“We live here part of the year, so we want to know about the town and the culture,” Mary Beyer said. “There’s so many different things going on here that are different than the rest of the United States.”

Throughout the tour Saturday, Knopp drew connections — from Brownsville to McAllen, to the King Ranch, to the Texas Rangers, to past U.S. presidents, even to pirates from New Orleans.

Long ago, it turns out, Matamoros was a thriving trade partner with the Louisiana city for “mostly illegal” items, Knopp said.

Historic homes

The tour faced the juxtapositions of beautiful historic buildings next to houses affected by urban blight, of pondering bygone eras as Tejano music blared from cars and airplanes buzzed overhead.

Knopp spoke disappointedly about the decay of some historical homes.

“If you don’t have somebody living in a place, then it becomes a problem,” he said, shaking his head and sighing.

He said all cities suffer the loss of historical sites, noting the 1950s and 1960s were “a bad patch” for Brownsville.

He pointed out “magnificent mansions” — one now a halfway house, another a nursing home — and old religious buildings abandoned with the passage of time.

Yet, the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, on Elizabeth Street, remains.

It was a focus of the tour, with Deacon John Kinch noting its strong historical ties to families throughout the Rio Grande Valley.

The original pews and stained glass were highlights, but Kinch said there were no records regarding the construction of the building. The church, he said, was “built on a shoestring.”

He said it was his mother who told him about the large statue of Jesus atop the altar — that the statue apparently was ordered with the idea that it would go outside the church.

But it found its home inside when it was discovered to be made of plaster, not concrete.

“Some history is written in books and other gets told to you by family,” Kinch said.