La Villita — the Little Village — is the oldest neighborhood in San Antonio, abandoned, flooded, rebuilt and reimagined so many times it seems to carry every era of the city's life at once. As early as 1722, indigenous workers and soldiers' families settled on this low-lying bank of the San Antonio River, building simple adobe and stone homes. When wealthier families moved to higher ground after repeated flooding, La Villita became home to German and French immigrants in the mid-1800s, who added limestone cottages and iron-gated courtyards.
After another round of floods and neglect in the early twentieth century, the neighborhood was slated for demolition. Instead, Mayor Maury Maverick Sr. — grandson of the man who gave us the word 'maverick' — launched a WPA restoration project in 1939 that saved the historic structures and transformed La Villita into an arts village. Today, working artists, galleries, and craft studios occupy the same cramped, charming buildings that have housed so many different San Antonio lives.
The cobblestones under your feet have been walked by Spanish soldiers, German brewers, Tejano families, and now, you.