Brownsville: Beauty on the Border

"If you want to see Brownsville as it was 150 years ago, look up at the second and third floors of its old buildings. Owners used to renovate only the bottom floors," explains Tony Knopp. A history professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville, Tony leads walking tours from the Brownsville Heritage Complex through the old downtown and former Fort Brown, now part of the UTB campus.

Tony guides us past crowds of Mexican day-trippers who have walked across Gateway International Bridge from Matamoros to shop, past casas de cambio where Americans heading south are exchanging dollars for pesos, and on to these old mercantile houses. The weathered, tan brick buildings boast tall windows, verandas, and ironwork balconies that recall New Orleans. Just a few yards from a curve of the Rio Grande, a light blue building from 1849 houses a customs broker, and across the street, contemporary art at Galeria 409 fills the 1852 Webb-Miller building. Nearby and still in use, the petite Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception dates to the 1850s. A few blocks west, inside a reincarnated stable, luxurious pampering awaits patrons at today's Carriage House Day Spa, and, a few blocks east, vestiges of the earthen walls of the original Fort Brown remain as part of the driving range at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course. In some parts of the city's historic heart, mesquite blocks, used as pavers on the earliest streets of Texas' southernmost city, still peek through the modern asphalt.

See the full article in the January 2007 issue.

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