About this tour
King William is San Antonio's original suburb — a leafy grid of Victorian mansions raised in the 1870s and 80s by the German merchant families who'd grown rich on the city's cotton, wool, and hide trade. Wander past limestone Italianate towers, Gothic Revival porches, and one preservationist's personal museum, and you're walking through the wealth, taste, and homesickness of an immigrant generation that named its own street after a Prussian king. The route loops from the family who founded the neighborhood to the U.S. Army arsenal that predates it, ending at the fortified magazine that once supplied troops across the Texas frontier.