Plaza Towns of South Texas

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. ABSTRACT.Most towns in south Texas were founded after the area had become part of the United States, yet plazas as traditional Spanish-American features were included in town layouts. The decision to construct a plaza resulted from a strong Hispanic identity among ethnic Mexicans in these communities and from the recognition by influential Anglo-Americans of the form's symbolic role. Plaza towns are more numerous in south Texas than elsewhere in the Hispanic-American borderlands. A s a physical form and social space, the plaza is a common feature of settlements throughout Hispanic America that varies in type, form, and landscape characteristics (Stanislawski 1969;Elbow 1975;Gade 1976). In the borderland region shared by Mexico and the United States, differences of this sort are more pronounced than in Latin America, in part because of the interactions of Hispanic and Anglo-American traditions.This article examines the plaza as a townscape form in the Hispanic-American borderland and shows that the plaza is diagnostic of regional culture identity there, especially in south Texas. Among the issues addressed are why some but not all Hispanic-founded or predominantly Hispanicpopulated towns of south Texas have plazas; the nature of plaza variability according to morphology, social function, and landscape characteristic in selected towns; and how plazas have functioned as landmarks of Hispanic identity in the past and the present. The plaza as a symbolic social form can be a telling signature of Mexican American regional variation in the Hispanic-American borderland. THE PLAZA IN SPAIN AND HISPANIC AMERICAPlazas in Spanish towns, unlike their Hispanic-American descendants, apparently were not social nodes, and the hub of the community often was some distance from a plaza (Foster 1960,47-48). Consequently, Spanish plazas were not usually common spaces; rather, they maintained specialized functions. Three types of Spanish plazas have been identified: market plazas, organic plazas, and monumental plazas.Market plazas, perhaps the oldest form, appeared as early as the eleventh century, were principally unplanned, and usually lay on the town periphery. Some of the earliest market plazas may have been cemeteries surrounding churches because of limitations of space in walled cities. Not uncommonly, market plazas emerged near city gates, immediately outside the wall, and, * DR. ARREOLA is an associate professor of geography at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-0104. This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Fri, 9 May 2014 01:14:53 AM All use subject to J...

The Non‐Pennsylvania Town: Diffusion of Urban Plan Forms in the American West*

“…He preferred to focus largely on the welter of ideographic circumstances in towns that gave rise to their layouts and to couch his conceptualization of transmission processes in passing comments on broad urban categories based on region, dominant economic activity (such as mining towns), or transportation regime (railroad creations) (see, for example, Reps 1965Reps ,1972Reps ,1979. The Hispanic influence on U.S. urban morphology, with its emphasis on the central plaza, is well documented in Crouch, Garr, and Mundigo (1982) and Arreola (1992). For Mormon morphological characteristics, see Rosenvall (1972) and Parera (2005). 4.…”