River Walk San Antonio cypress bend
— old bald cypress holding the city's quieter floor.
Not only on a wall.
River Walk San Antonio cypress bend, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A flight of stone steps drops from a downtown sidewalk to a different city. The River Walk follows a horseshoe bend of the San Antonio River one level below the street, under a long colonnade of bald cypress that root straight into the bank. Their knees show in the low water. Flat-bottom barges slide past. The traffic above goes quiet, replaced by Spanish, English, the clack of cutlery from a terrace, and the sound the cypress make when the wind moves through their needles.
The place, in three passes.
The San Antonio River Walk (Paseo del Río) follows the San Antonio River through the downtown loop one level below the surrounding streets, with the central downtown section running about 1.25 miles around a horseshoe bend. Architect Robert Hugman designed the original plan in 1929; the masonry, footbridges, and landscaping were built between 1939 and 1941 with WPA funding. The river was straightened by a flood-control cutoff completed in 1929, leaving the loop as the slow ornamental channel that carries the walk today.
Bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) line the banks the length of the central loop, many predating the WPA construction and reaching 80 to 100 feet, with the buttressed bases and exposed knees that give the species its silhouette. The trees tolerate the wet feet and the constant minor flooding that defines the channel. The river itself is fed by springs in Brackenridge Park to the north and by the Edwards Aquifer, then released downtown at a controlled rate that keeps the walk at a steady summer level.
Access to the downtown loop is free and continuous, by any of dozens of street-level stairs and ramps including those off Commerce, Houston, and Market Streets. GO RIO river barges run guided tours and shuttle service along the loop and out to the Pearl and Mission Reach extensions; tickets are sold at staffed kiosks. The Alamo sits two blocks east of the walk, and the four downstream Spanish missions of San Antonio Missions National Historical Park are reached by following the Mission Reach south for several miles.
