Culture

At the southern edge of Brackenridge Park, just off Broadway, sits a low limestone building you might not notice at first. Golf carts trundle past, and people come and go from the Brackenridge Golf Course Clubhouse nearby. The venerable golf course, which opened in 1916, was the site of the first Texas Open golf tournament (now the Valero Texas Open), and the Texas Golf Hall of Fame and Museum is part of the clubhouse.

For most people in San Antonio, Fiesta® has ended for the year. But for one of the top Fiesta royals, the real work is just getting started.

Today, most people think of the Alamo as a single structure: the limestone church rising from Alamo Plaza, solemn and self-contained. But that familiar image is the product of survival, accident and later choices — not historical reality.

San Antonio’s rise as a cultural hub didn’t come solely from major institutions or multi-million-dollar venues. Much of the city’s artistic identity was forged at the neighborhood level — in converted warehouses, community theatres, repurposed breweries and grassroots festivals that grew into cultural landmarks.

For more than four decades, Michael Lynd Sr., principal of Lynd — a San Antonio-based multi-family management company — has carried a vision rooted in service and remembrance.

In the heart of downtown San Antonio, the glow of the Majestic Theatre’s marquee lights up Houston Street, drawing a stream of theatergoers toward its ornate interior. Elsewhere on the block, diners rush in and out of restaurants, and a group of paranormal enthusiasts bravely partakes in one of several guided walking ghost tours. A couple of decades ago, this same stretch was eerily quiet — its once-grand façades dulled by time and its storefronts shuttered and forgotten. Today, the street is abuzz and aglow again.