Japanese Tea Garden

In the early 1900s, city parks commissioner Ray Lambert conceived a Japanese Tea Garden to beautify rock quarries abandoned by the San Antonio Portland Cement Company, and the brick and stone smokestack east of the teahouse remained part of the old Portland Cement Kiln. Lambert enlisted Japanese artist Kimi Eizo Jingu to help design an authentic garden after Jingu had recently arrived in San Antonio with his family, worked for the U.S. Army, and sold watercolor paintings part-time downtown. Completed and christened in 1919, the garden was built with prison labor and corporate and individual donations, with numerous plants imported from gardens in Japan. A house built from old quarry rock was provided for the Jingu family, who served as overseers, and in 1926 they opened a tea house in its upper level. Before his death in 1936, Jingu became nationally recognized for his knowledge of teas. The family remained there until shortly after the December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor Incident, when public fear and resentment led to their removal and the garden's renaming as the Chinese Tea Garden. At that time a Chinese-style entry bearing that inscription was added, reportedly designed by Maximo Cortez and built by Dionicio Rodriguez, a Mexican national known for secretive cement-sculpture techniques and other works in San Antonio and across the United States. In 1983, the San Antonio City Council restored the original name in consideration of the number of Japanese-Americans who had fought honorably for the United States during World War Two.

San Antonio, Texas · United States