Brackenridge Park – Borglum Studio Renovation

An adjacent building to the Brackenridge Park Golf Clubhouse once served as the working studio for artist Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who created the heads of the U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore. The structure was built in 1885 from local limestone and timbers to serve as a water pumping station. In 1905, the pump house became obsolete with the drilling of artisan wells into the Edwards Aquifer. Around the abandoned pump house, the untamed land was sculpted into a golf course. In Reid Meyers’ self-published book, “The Ghosts of Old Brack,” he spotlights Gutzon Borglum’s arrival in San Antonio in 1924 and his rental of the old pump house. Through the windows, he likely would have seen golfers warming up. “That was what made it nice as an artist studio, the setting and light, the large space,” says San Antonio historian Maria Watson Pfeiffer.

After Borglum’s use of the studio passed, it served as the creative space of other noted regional artists, and art students of the Wiite and Fort Sam Houston.

Today, the Borglum Studio looks out on the 17th hole of the golf course.