H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Cover image: sourced from Open Library (cover_i 9781556221453, ISBN-keyed) — first-party in-hand capture pending.

By Mark Louis Rybczyk and Richard III Rouse · 1992 · Wordware Publishing, Plano, Texas · 290 pp. · ISBN 1-55622-145-2

Bibliographic detail

  • Title: San Antonio Uncovered
  • Authors: Mark Louis Rybczyk (KZEP-FM radio personality “Shanghai Jack”) with Richard III Rouse
  • Edition held: First edition, 1992
  • Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Plano, Texas
  • ISBN-10: 1-55622-145-2
  • ISBN-13: 978-1-55622-145-3
  • Pagination: 290 pp.
  • Format: Trade paperback

Physical description

Trade-paperback popular history / travel guide. Includes bibliographical references and an index. Cover and condition to be confirmed in-hand.

Provenance

Acquired 29 September 2014 via Amazon (referrer tag ppx_hzod_title from the Amazon order-history link); accessioned as HH-BOOK-2014-0008.

Why it matters

San Antonio Uncovered is the popular / conversational SA reference on the city-context shelf. Where Saving San Antonio (Fisher, 1996) is the canonical preservation narrative, Downtown San Antonio (Korte & Pech, 2013) is the Arcadia visual timeline, and Historic Photos of San Antonio (Faulkner, 2007) is the large-format archival photo reference, San Antonio Uncovered is the lighter, anecdote-rich tour — useful for surfacing offbeat or under-documented sites and oral-tradition leads rather than scholarly attribution.

For H and H research the book functions as lead-finding material:

  1. Neighborhood and street-level vignettes for the SA H and H operated in — West Commerce, downtown, the produce / coffee / spice trade district.
  2. Names of buildings, businesses, and personalities that may surface H and H-adjacent surnames (Hoffmann, Hayman, Stevens, Menger) or coffee-trade firms worth chasing in newspapers and city directories.
  3. A radio-personality voice — Rybczyk’s “Shanghai Jack” KZEP-FM stories tend to favor unusual or forgotten places, so the entries may include sites that more formal histories pass over.

Open questions

  • Does any entry mention Hoffmann-Hayman, H and H Coffee, 601 Delaware Street, or 1223 W. Commerce? A close index-and-toc pass should answer this on first in-hand reading.
  • Does it surface any leads on the early-twentieth-century West Commerce industrial corridor that would extend or correct what’s documented at 601 Delaware Street?

Related: Saving San Antonio (Fisher, 1996) · Downtown San Antonio (Korte & Pech, 2013) · Historic Photos of San Antonio (Faulkner, 2007) · 601 Delaware Street · Library