La Villita: Village Reborn

La Villita began as San Antonio's earliest riverside neighborhood, a cluster of soldiers' and settlers' homes that grew up beside the presidio and, over two centuries, slid into genuine disrepair. In 1939, a Depression-era WPA restoration project — pushed hard by the San Antonio Conservation Society and a reform mayor named Maury Maverick — rescued the block wholesale, turning crumbling adobe and limestone houses into the walkable arts village that stands today. This tiny, tightly packed tour crosses the whole footprint in a few minutes on foot: a Spanish-colonial marker, a quirky 19th-century chapel, a surrender site from the Texas Revolution, an architect's signature river theater, and the grounds of the city's biggest annual street party.