A historic San Antonio house is getting new life as a hub for artwork and concrete motion. Hemisfair has restored the Tynan-Sweeney Home to accommodate the primary storefront from domestically owned information service Mural Journey Bike Excursions.
“The transfer to the Tynan-Sweeney Home is the pure evolution of a mission for us that began on the streets of San Antonio years in the past,” mentioned Mural Journey proprietor and operator Brian Gregory Benavidez. “For years, we’ve been targeted on getting extra eyes on San Antonio’s road artwork and displaying how biking is an actual method to transfer by way of the downtown hall.”
The 1,675-square-foot Tynan-Sweeney Home was in-built 1868 by Irish immigrant James Sweeney, serving as a household residence for generations. It served as a boarding home till 1964, when the town began gobbling up buildings for HemisFair ’68. On the World’s Truthful, it served Cajun fare as Pierre’s Interlude.
The Hemisfair Park Space Redevelopment Company later acquired it as a part of their general revitalization and preservation of the realm as a neighborhood hub for the town. It was one of many few properties to outlive HemisFair demolition, and at the moment it stays one of many few standing examples of vernacular structure — conventional buildings that used native supplies and strategies to create practical buildings.
Mural Journey was based in 2018 by Benavidez, an avid bike owner who grew up in Alamo Metropolis. It affords quite a lot of guided strolling and biking excursions round city that concentrate on historical past and artwork, significantly murals. A few of San Antonio’s finest murals are simply blocks away from the brand new headquarters, together with the 1968 “Confluence of Civilizations” mosaic by Juan O’Gorman and a 2025 “Legacy Mural” by Chris Fonseca.
The brand new storefront will prolong the arty mission with an indoor artwork gallery and native retail house. The compound may even home the Spoke Spot, a multipurpose space for out of doors neighborhood artwork programming and bike valet, e-bike, and e-scooter charging.
“Shifting to a everlasting residence at Hemisfair lastly offers us the chance to carry all of that collectively in a single spot,” mentioned Benavidez. “It’s a house base the place we are able to put the highlight on the artists and native manufacturers we’ve been speaking about for years, creating an area that displays the inventive vitality of the town for each locals and vacationers alike.”
Renovation will start within the subsequent a number of months, and Mural Journey Bike Excursions is anticipated to start out providing excursions later this 12 months.
