To Francois Giraud, architect, we owe the lovely 1851 Ursuline Academy buildings. (The Club Giraud occupies the Academy's "dependencies" - early kitchen, carriage sheds, music rooms, laundry.)

To Francois Giraud, conservationist, we owe San Antonio's first public park, San Pedro Springs. In 1852 he persuaded the city fathers to set aside the plot of land around the Springs, making it the second public park in the United States, the first being Boston. His pioneer efforts preceded by five years Olmstead's plans for Central Park in New York.

He designed other important buildings, supervised restoration of the Alamo and San Fernando Cathedral, became city engineer and ultimately, mayor. With the exception of the Ursuline and St. Mary's College, his work has not survived the ravages of progress.

Born in Charleston in 1818 and educated in France, Giraud and his family came to San Antonio in 1847. In the preceding decade of the Republic, San Antonio was a war zone. Continual wars with Indians and Mexicans left the town virtually destroyed, stagnant and deserted. Population had fallen to 800. The missions were in ruins. The only two priests in San Antonio had not said mass in years and were living in open concubinage.

To revitalize the Catholic Church in Texas can Bishop Jean-Marie Odin in 1842. He removed the old priests, installed Rev. Calvo, and thus began the French flavoring of the frontier in Texas. The French influence on education was profound. The first step was the establishment of the first school for girls in San Antonio. Bishop Odin engaged the newly arrived French architect, Francois Giraud, to design and supervise the building of the Ursuline Academy and Convent from 1848 to 1849.

By 1851, when seven French nuns, accompanied by Father Dubuis, arrived to open the Academy, San Antonio's population had grown to 3500. Progress and the receding of the frontier had been accelerated by Texas' entry into the Unions and by trade and immigration. At the Academy, classes were taught in French, German, English, and Spanish.

In an 1852 letter written to a sister in Ireland, a nun made the following comment: "Great allowances must be made for people growing up in this country. It is scarcely possible for them to advance to the same degree of perfection as those from the old country - the devil having had full sway here for so many years, he still exercises considerable influence over souls."

However, undeterred by such unpromising material, by the wolves and wilderness to the north, by the occasional naked Indian streaking through their gardens on the south, the nuns preserved, and for over one hundred years provided a sanctuary of learning on the banks of the San Antonio River. In 1965 they moved north to a new campus, selling the downtown site to a developer and to the San Antonio Conservation Society.

The San Antonio Conservation Society bought the Chapel, Priest's House and First Academy building and in 1971 generously invited the Southwest Craft Center to relocate its Art School there. The Craft Center purchased the Conservation Society property in 1975.

The Southwest Craft Center began as a gallery in La Villita in 1968, "to provide education in handcrafts and the arts, to encourage appreciation for the work of the craftsman." Moving to the Ursuline enabled the Craft Center to expand enrollment to 400 students each semester with classes in ceramics, sculpture, paining, jewelry, paper-making, stained glass, calligraphy, photography, weaving, spinning, and dyeing. The program is enhanced by lectures, workshops and visiting artists of national reputation. A free children's program, Saturday Morning Discovery, provides, for many, their first art adventure.

Thanks to generous friends and benefactors, additional portions of the original Ursuline property have been acquired and now the entire block is under Craft Center ownership.

The Club Giraud was founded in 1981 with its avowed purposes to preserve the historic buildings which it occupies, to provide funds for the preservation of the Ursuline Complex (recorded on the National Register for Historic Places and a Texas Landmark) and to contribute to a quality school for crafts and the arts, based on professionalism. the rare combination of school, gallery and club in an Ursuline Academy and Convent is indeed a splendid example of "adaptive use of historic structures," a goal of present day conservationists. Francois Giraud would be pleased.