Craft / Historic Preservation / Governmental

Goliad State Park Caretaker’s Cottage

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Goliad State Park is located in Goliad County, along the San Antonio River. FPC facilitated renovation of the 1930’s era Caretaker’s Cottage into the park’s new visitor center. The building incorporates meeting and interpretive spaces, offices, and restrooms. The new center focuses on the interpretation of the El Camino Real, which carried people from northwestern Louisiana, to San Antonio, and on to Mexico City. Original traces of the road can be seen at the park.

The park is also home to the restored Spanish Colonial era Mission Espiritu Santo, and this project included site improvements to the ruins of the 1750s Mission Rosario State Historic Site. The architects who restored the Mission in the 1930’s first built the Caretaker’s Cottage as a place to live and work during the project and they used the construction of the Cottage to try different building techniques that were later used to restore the Mission.

FPC was engaged to restore and preserve the 2,000 square foot cottage that was being used a ranger office, and convert it into the park visitor and interpretive center to tell the story of the original construction and craftsmanship of the cottage. The custodian cottage restoration includes a new cypress shingle roof, new lime plaster on the exterior, and a full restoration on the interior plaster. Original interior paint colors were sampled, and the original wall patterns were recreated. Historic doors, windows, large entry gate, and hardware were restored and reused where permitted by code including all of the stained wood trim and ceilings were reconditioned. The exterior courtyard was reconditioned by removing every paver and resetting it in its original location at new elevations to meet accessible codes. The cypress pergola and entry gates were recreated based off of historic images and drawings.

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