VISITORS TO LA VILLITA, SAN ANTONIO’S popular attraction saluting the city’s Hispanic heritage, will soon notice construction crews putting up a two-story octagonal building across the street at the previously moribund HemisFair. No, La Villita is not expanding. The vaguely Victorian brick pavilion, which is designed to fit in with the surrounding historic buildings, will honor San Antonio’s unheralded German heritage instead.
The new building is a key element in German Heritage Park, an ambitious scheme hatched three years ago by William Dielmann III, the former president of San Antonio Liederkranz, a century-old men’s singing club. Dielmann wanted to find the club a permanent home in congenial surroundings by its 100th birthday this year. No site seemed more appropriate than the block of buildings constructed by German immigrants in the nineteenth century, standing empty on the city-owned HemisFair grounds. The committee formed for the project envisioned a restaurant and b