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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Not a bad comment until BAM! The Alamo is such a lackluster disappointing building. It's tiny. Even if you know it is small, it is still impressive in how small it really is. It is the exact opposite of knowing how big the Grand Canyon is but still being amazed at its size when you visit in person. It's also a total let down in that no bicycles were found there.

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Why does a building have to be large in order to be historically important?

Because it goes against the everything is bigger in Texas narrative.

It’s just hard to express how small it is until you’ve been there. Once you are there, it’s just underwhelming.

Doesn’t the small size make it more impressive that the Texians held out for so long?

Not really. At the time of the battle the complex covered several acres, with the buildings built in a squarish shape around a courtyard. The Mexican army burnt most of the buildings down out of spite as they retreated, and like most other ruins it was mined for stone and brick to build new buildings with.

Really only the chapel is left, and that was never intended for anything other than church services for a few hundred people.

Well, all that remains of the alamo is the chapel and a residential unit.

It was originally a quickly fortified missionary complex which is a large plaza surrounded by walls.

You may have misunderstood what you were looking at. All that is really left is the chapel. It’s just a church sized for a few hundred people. All of the houses, offices, barracks, work rooms, stables, storehouses, defensive works, etc, etc are all gone. They were left to rot when the place was abandoned for a decade or two, then cleaned up when there was an army present, heavily damaged in a certain famous battle that you might remember, partially repaired by the occupying Mexican army, then burnt down again as they left. Only the chapel remains, and that’s because the walls were built of limestone blocks four feet thick. They were too solid to tear down and couldn’t be burnt.

Also it should be equated to a wilderness fort. A fortress it was not.

Very true. It was designed to keep out thieves, not an army.

Did you check the basement?

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