Witte Museum & Mays Family Center

Located on the bank of the San Antonio River, the Witte Museum has served as a destination for learning about the people, plants, and animals of South Texas for almost a century. Updating its campus from the original 1970s design, Lake Flato collaborated with the Museum to create a phased master plan of renovations, additions, and pavilions which have allowed the museum to take advantage of its site set within a vibrant urban park and major urban corridor. The design unites disparately functioning buildings into a campus with one identity while respecting the site’s historic and environmental elements.

The result is extraordinary ... the approach is so true to its origins that in the midst of South Texas ambition, the model of a regional museum still stakes its enduring claim. Edward Rothstein

Wall Street Journal

The Witte Museum master plan sought to reorganize the campus in a way that celebrates the nearby San Antonio River and preserves the site’s historic structures through a series of renovations and additions. By converting a city street into a pedestrian nature walk, the Witte Museum is transformed into a pedestrian-oriented campus that reinforces its adjacency to nearby Brackenridge Park. The design pushes the campus 50 feet closer to the Broadway corridor to reinforce the museum’s presence in the community.

The renovated Witte Museum celebrates the people, plants, and animals of South Texas with galleries, live labs, interactive exhibits, and interpretive details that reinforce the museum’s storytelling mission while co-mingling collections to tell new stories from different perspectives.

The Witte Museum wanted to ensure its financial sustainability through the addition of traveling programs and rentable event spaces. To support deeper visitor engagement, the renovation provides more interactive exhibits. Each gallery is equipped with an associated learning lab that supports extended hands-on learning. Some of these support labs are housed within screened porches that provide protective environments for engaging students students within the context of the site.

The building’s main façade is a long-stepped wall of locally quarried limestone constructed with “sacked joint” mortar recalling the sedimentary layers of the ancient sea floor and the ecology of the region. T. Rex “claw prints” and fossils from this epoch are placed within the wall. Romanesque arches recall the downriver missions of the 17th century, and the playful 1920’s craft features found in Brackenridge Park also find expression in the site.