The City of San Antonio leased its hard rock quarry in what is today Brackenridge Park from the middle 19th to early 20th centuries. Alamo Roman and Portland Cement Company, later called Alamo Cement Company, used the quarry from 1880 until 1908 when it moved to a new facility with rail access north of the City limits. The abandoned quarry was adjacent to Brackenridge Park that had been donated to the City in 1899, and to a tract owned by the Koehler Family that was donated to the City for park land in 1915.
As early as 1914, the city's cultural leaders and park officials began to discuss new uses for the abandoned quarry. Some saw the unique, natural setting of the quarry's deep excavations shaped in a huge semicircle as the backdrop for an open-air Greek amphitheater. Observing the site, the manager of the Boston National Grand Opera Company urged the city to consider such a facility, saying that, "It could be made one of the show places in the country."
It was Ray Lambert, appointed Parks Commissioner in 1915, who transformed the City’s old quarry into a civic attraction. On the northern portion of the site where the Cement Company’s kilns had been located, Lambert built a lushly landscaped lily pond that he named the Japanese Garden. To the south, City workers constructed the Texas Star Garden, an enormous designed landscape with patterns formed by rocks and flowers. Newspapers as early as 1926 refer to the area as "the sunken garden."
The natural acoustic features of the quarry drew local performers to the site, and in 1926, the Chaminade Choral Society gave a well-received performance in the Texas Star Garden. The Society's president, Mrs. Eli Hertzberg, urged that the area be considered for outdoor musical and other events too large for the Municipal Auditorium. In late 1927, Mrs. Hertzberg suggested that such a theater be named the Tobin Memorial Amphitheater to honor Mayor John W. Tobin who had recently died while in office. Mrs. Hertzberg estimated that an outdoor amphitheater at this location could seat 50,000 to 60,000 people.
