Department of Arts & Culture: Friesenhahn Park Public Art Opportunity
Department of Arts & Culture: Friesenhahn Park Public Art Opportunity
The City of San Antonio’s Department of Arts & Culture has identified Friesenhahn Park (15701 O’Connor Road) as an opportunity for an outdoor public art sculpture project. We are in the early stages of the project and need your help selecting the top theme to be explored in the artwork’s design.
For more information about the City’s Public Art Division please visit Get Creative San Antonio.
Funding:
2022-2027 Bond Program—Parks Proposition
Current Phase:
Community Engagement
Artist:
K&H Creative
Artwork Type:
Sculpture
District & Address:
City Council District 10
15701 O’Connor Road
Project Manager:
For more information on this project, please contact:
Thu Nguyen, Public Art Project Manager
Office: (210) 207-6963
Email: [email protected]
All Public Art Projects managed by the City of San Antonio’s Department of Arts & Culture follow a comprehensive process. The Public Art Process includes six major checkpoints, in which we check in with the community and stakeholders for updates and feedback from beginning to end. Milestones with an asterisk indicate required approvals by our Public Art Committee and San Antonio Arts Commission. On average, a project can be completed in up to 24 months.
Project Overview:
Friesenhahn Park, in District 10, offers residents the opportunity to enjoy quality time with family and friends in the great outdoors on approximately 54 acres of land. Trails and other furnishings run the length of the park from Classen to O’Connor Road, as a creek bisects the area. Situated south of a residential area, the park is catty-corner to Madison High School and northwest of the Union Pacific Railway tracks.
In 2019, an archaeological survey revealed eight archeological sites, as documented in the Texas Historical Commission’s Archeological Sites Atlas. All but one of those sites are historic. Findings include four limestone buildings, four cisterns, a root cellar, and two cemeteries dating to the late 19th- or early 20th-Centuries. One prehistoric site is at the northern edge of the park dating back to the Archaic Period. Additionally, a 1938 map showed a now-defunct road passed through the park.
Lastly, Friesenhahn boasts a vast lawn scattered with oak, mesquite, hackberry, and huisache trees. On the forest floor—where the landscape turns to a wet and marshy floodplain—privet, greenbrier, and grasses are at the course of the stream.
Public Art Project locations must gain approval from the San Antonio Art’s Commission’s Public Art Committee before the project can continue. This project gained approval on from the Public Art Committee on September 7, 2023.
If a project is in a park or historic district/location it must gain approval from the City of San Antonio’s Office of Historic Preservation’s Historic Design Review Commission. This project gained approval from the Historic Design Review Commission on January 8, 2024.
Project Location:
The sculpture will be located in Friesenhahn Park.
Project location photo taken April 15, 2025.
