This story has been updated.
Built on San Antonio area farmland in 1909, Casa de Dios’ wood-frame structure served as a mission house that provided food, clothing and health care for migrants.
A newspaper report from 1919 called the original cruciform-shaped chapel a “quaint little cornfield milk station,” and its founder the “snowy-haired” Sarah Ostrom, a pioneer in distribution.
Still standing between residential properties on a cul-de-sac lined by palm trees, Casa de Dios could become a designated historic landmark in the coming year.
Since acquiring the property at 910 E. Mistletoe Ave. in 2021, owner Jill Giles has worked to preserve the structure while maintaining its historic integrity.
The building was previously the studio of acclaimed San Antonio artist Brad Braune, a friend of Giles’. The artist created the first Texas Folklife Festival poster, which featured a longhorn with a yellow balloon tied to one horn, and other well-known works.
These days, Giles and two coworkers use the space as a studio for her environmental design business, Design Annex.
But, “this space to me needs to be more public,” she said. “There’s just something about when you walk in this space, it just makes you smile. And I love the Bohemian nature of it.”
Ostrom built the one-story vernacular building with lumber from the West End Lumber Company and money she had saved to repair her own home. The simple shotgun-style building has painted clapboard and drop siding, a cross-gable roof, tall windows and a cupola that was added later.
The bird’s-eye-view of the building is of a cross.
Inside, the narrow space opens to a kitchen at the center of the cross where Giles installed a marble-topped antique cabinet that looks much like an altar. Natural light pours in through windows that span nearly to the beadboarded ceiling.
Ostrom’s social service and missionary activities began long before she built Casa de Dios, according to documents prepared for a National Register of Historic Places nomination. In 1883, she organized the philanthropic Ladies Benevolent Association in San Antonio to help “fallen women” and offer a place of refuge and avenues for rebuilding their lives.
She built the structure in 1909 as a small church and mission, and used it to provide families in need with food, clothing and other assistance. An early newspaper photo shows children lined up with tin pails to receive fresh milk.
It appears to be the only social welfare organization founded independently by a woman without affiliation to a larger private organization or religious institution, state the documents. Casa de Dios predates even the original historic Catholic church located steps away, Our Lady of Sorrows, built in 1915.
Following Ostrom’s death in 1925 and as the city began expanding north, her daughter, Frances Ostrom, subdivided the surrounding property into a residential neighborhood known as the Mistletoe Addition. Frances retained and continued to operate Casa de Dios until 1942.
Giles plans to apply for a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, the chapel’s eligibility based on the significance of its social history.
Giles appreciates Casa’s long-ago history as much as its present-day story as Braune’s studio and wants to give it a future with the help of tax credits a historic designation could bring.
“It’s just had such a rich history and I love that my friend Brad used to be there and I just think, for some reason when we all walked in, it just felt like it needed to be a real community cafe,” she said.
Her plans are not fully laid out, she said, but she has a vision for it. “We want it to look and operate and function but not be over-renovated,” she said. “And that’s the toughest kind of thing to do.”
Giles said she has restored other historic properties in San Antonio, including a building at 429 N. St. Mary’s St. and a home in the King William District, and the 1860-era Tondre Store in Castroville’s historic district.
Tucked into a tiny street between North St. Mary’s and U.S. Highway 281, Casa de Dios has something of a low profile.
“I had never heard of it,” said Ricki Kushner, chairwoman of the historic preservation committee of the Tobin Hill Community Association and longtime resident of the historic district.
But reading the documents submitted for the building’s landmark designation helped Kushner recall seeing the name Ostrom in land records related to Tobin Hill, one of the earliest neighborhoods in San Antonio.
“I had no idea that she had lived in the neighborhood, so it was really a surprise and it was one of the happiest surprises I’ve had in a long time.”
