Historic Structures

Waco High School, Waco Texas

The Waco High School complex is a landmark in Waco's Central Business District, and includes the 1912 Beaux-arts school building, the 1924 Gothic Revival auditorium, and the 1955 mid-century modern music building. It served as the city's primary high school from 1912 through 1971, with an all-white student body until integration of the Waco school district in the late 1960s. The completion of the Waco High School was a high point in the public school district's plan to modernize the school system in the first half of the 20^th century. Its monumental presence recalls an era when local school districts constructed educational buildings that symbolized the importance of education to the community. The school building is the oldest extant public school building in Waco. Free education in the State of Texas began with the passage of an act in 1854 to provide funding for county public schools. McLennan County created fourteen school districts, which were increased to thirty-three districts in later years. The City of Waco and environs was designated as District Number 1. In 1875, the Texas Legislature authorized city governments to assume control of public schools within their established city limits, and the Waco city council decided to exercise their new rights. The city needed income to fund the schools, but in 1875 voters decided not to institute a school tax. Nevertheless, the city council appointed an education committee and the mayor served as the superintendent of schools. To acquire money to run the free public schools, three leagues of land (about 13,285 acres) in Eastland County that the state gave to the school system in 1854 were sold, beginning in 1876, netting an average of $2.86 per acre, totaling $57,376.74 by 1919.

New Alcazar Hotel - Central Building, Clarksdale Mississippi

The New Alcazar Hotel was built in 1914-15 to supersede the original Alcazar Hotel, built on an adjoining lot to the south in ca. 1895 by the locally-famed real estate partnership of Cecil W. King (1845-1924) and W.P. Anderson (n.d.). King and Anderson began their real estate careers as planters outside of Clarksdale, slowly expanding their plantation with acquisitions of surrounding farm lands over time. By the 1890s, the pair had begun to acquire holdings in Downtown Clarksdale and apparently entered real estate development with the construction of the original Alcazar Hotel. At the time of Cecil King's death in 1924, the land holdings of the K & A Plantation exceeded 15,000 acres; their holdings in downtown Clarksdale at this time are not known. The original Romanesque Revival and Moorish-influenced Alcazar Hotel became the center of social and cultural activity in Clarksdale and the vast Mississippi Delta surrounding it. With the close of the twentieth century's first decade, the hotel was no longer large enough to serve the demands for its use. Construction of the New Alcazar to the north of the original building was planned to double the size and numbers of public Spaces and tripled the number of hotel rooms.

Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad Depot, Madison South Dakota

Lake County was organized in 1873, taking its name from the numerous glacial lakes within its borders. Founded that same year, Madison soon became the county seat. Located at the center of the county, the city has been a focal point for regional commerce and politics almost since its beginning. As in most settlements of the state, its early existence depended upon the presence of reliable railroad service. The Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad (later adding the "Pacific" extension) entered Madison from the east in 1881. Because of its fortunate central location, the city became one of several minor hubs in the company's sprawling network of short lines. The Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, also called the Milwaukee Road, was incorporated in 1872 by merging a number of smaller lines. Among its many subsidiaries were: the Milwaukee and Watertown, Racine, Jamesville, Milwaukee and Northern, Menominee, and Dakota Southern. Like its competitors, the Milwaukee Road bought land, platted towns, promoted settlement, and became embroiled in local politics all along its lines. Its network, especially in southern Dakota Territory, was mostly a patchwork of short inefficient lines that eventually caused financial problems for the company. Adding to this after World War One, a collapsing farm economy, an end to free land available for settlement, and the advent of the automobile as a reliable form of transportation all triggered a pronounced decline in demand for railroads. The company went in and out of receivership several times during the next five decades, until it was granted final abandonment of its South Dakota lines in 1980. At that time the state of South Dakota purchased 918 miles of the company's 1802 miles of trackage in the state and leased the lines to the Burlington Northern and other smaller companies. Shortly thereafter, the Milwaukee Road ceased to exist as a corporate entity.

Spring Creek School, Zeona South Dakota

The school was named after Spring Creek, a tributary of the North Fork of the Moreau River, the closest water source. Constructed in 1920 from a plan in the South Dakota state standards publication for rural schools, the Spring Creek school replaced an earlier school built on the same spot in 1912. The original school was held in a sod claim shack that was part dugout. The local ranchers and homesteaders made the school benches and desks, and guled a piece of oil cloth that was painted black to one of the walls to serve as a blackboard. A homesteader in the Govert area of Harding County, Cora Minks, originally from Ohio where she had been a school teacher, was the first teacher in the school which had twenty-two students in 1912.

Pulp Mill Covered Bridge, Middlebury Vermont

The Pulp Mill Covered Bridge is the last dual-lane or "double-barreled" covered wood bridge to carry a public highway in Vermont, and one of two such bridges to survive in the state. In 1957 there were only six other double-barreled covered bridges remaining in the United States. The Pulp Mill Bridge is also the longest Burr truss bridge surviving in Vermont. According to Herbert Wheaton Congdon, the Pulp Mill Bridge was probably built about 1820. This date ranks the Pulp Mill Bridge as the oldest covered bridge in Vermont, at least among those whose dates have been documented. Despite its age, the bridge continues to carry much local traffic on a paved road between Middlebury and Weybridge. Those towns also share ownership of the bridge, for it crosses the town boundary along the channel of Otter Creek.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Depot, Flora Illinois

Flora was surveyed and platted in 1854, the year the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad came through the area. The railroad company wanted to locate the depot at Mooresville, one mile west of the present location of Flora. The Moore brothers refused to donate or sell land for a station house. Mooresville was a town with a store or two, blacksmith shop, a number of dwellings and other buildings. The action of the Moore brothers killed their town when Samuel White offered his land a mile to the east, and Flora was platted. Many of the stores and houses from Mooresville were afterwards moved to Flora. Samuel White donated the land for the depot.

Hotel Waukegan - Chateau Waukegan, Waukegan Illinois

Conceived in 1926 and built in 1927, Hotel Waukegan was constructed during a decade when Waukegan's population grew from 19,226 to 34,499 and Waukegan was a thriving business city, with 65 industrial establishments employing 9500 people. Built during a boom period, and supported by public subscription, the hotel was sited at the intersection of two of Waukegan's most highly traveled streets, standing high on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. The twelve-story Hotel Waukegan has always been the tallest building in town and since its completion has had a distinctive presence in the city's streetscape. The site selected for construction of the Hotel Waukegan was prominent in Waukegan, at the northwest corner of Washington Street, the city's major east-west business street, and Sheridan Road, the city's premier residential address. It was to be located high on the bluff just before Washington drops downhill to the flats.

Waits River Schoolhouse, Topsham Vermont

The former Waits River Schoolhouse is an early twentieth century combination school and grange building which has sustained a series of well-documented historic alterations in response to standards set by the Vermont State Board of Education. Used as a school from 1914-1972, and as a grange hall from 1914-1953, the building reflects both educational and social institutions in the small, agricultural and manufacturing village of Waits River, Vermont. The chronology of alterations to the school describes the rural interpretation and implementation of the state's public school standardization process. The building is distinguished architecturally by a multi-story hipped roof form typical of twentieth century school buildings, by Colonial Revival style detailing, and by elaborate interior pressed metal cladding added in 1931.

Lebanon Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, Lebanon Oregon

In 1871, the Oregon & California (O&C) Railroad, the first railroad in the Willamette Valley, by-passed Lebanon and built their track through to Albany instead, 14 miles to the west. Located on the South Santiam River, the town founders sought to use the river as a link to the new rail line. An attempt was made in 1871 to navigate the river with the steamboat Calliope from the Willamette River to Lebanon via the Santiam River. It proved to be unsuccessful for the river was not deep enough to accommodate a fully loaded steamboat. In 1872-73, the Santiam-Albany Canal was completed as a means of connecting the agricultural and timber products of Eastern Linn County to the Willamette River steamboats and the O&C railroad. The town soon discovered that the current was too swift, making it extremely difficult to tow barges upstream. Nevertheless, the canal was still used for shipping products to Albany. Ultimately, the town would need a mode of transportation that would allow them to import goods as well as to export them.

Miller Plantation House, Olive Branch Mississippi

As the most sophisticated example of the Greek Revival style in DeSoto County, the Miller Plantation House is significant to the history of architecture. Not surprisingly, the most ambitious design element of the mansion is its portico with giant order columns and a full, well-proportioned entablature which is without a raking cornice for a pediment. While this arrangement is not uncommon, the unusual interpretation of the Corinthian order makes the Miller Plantation House virtually unique in Mississippi. Here, the Corinthian capital is produced with a single row of acanthus applied to the bell between the astragal of the shaft and the abacus. "Correct" Corinthian calls for a minimum of two superimposed rows of acanthus. The unknown builder who was responsible for this singular design betrayed his unfamiliarity with the classical orders but succeeded in producing an impressive and rich effect. He was more comfortable with the simpler joinery required for the handsome pilasters, frontispieces, and eared architrave trim which distinguish this house. A graceful spiral stair, the tour de force of the joiner's skill, is the highlight of the interior. The size and sophistication of the Miller Plantation House is unusual for its remote location. Planters who could afford a handsome mansion usually chose to live in town leaving the daily operation of outlying plantations to hired overseers. Thus, most planters of the Olive Branch vicinity lived in nearby Holly Springs, Mississippi, or Memphis, Tennessee. William Lord Miller, who had the house built in ca. 1849, was an exception. His house is unquestionably the most architecturally significant structure to survive from the antebellum period in DeSoto County history.

John Jacob Astor Hotel, Astoria Oregon

The eight-story John Jacob Astor Hotel is a prominent landmark in Astoria and was, in its hey-day, the hub of social and civic activity in the historic sea port at the mouth of the Columbia River. The reinforced concrete building is believed to be, even today, the tallest commercial structure on the Oregon Coast. Its construction was inspired by increased tourist traffic, and, as was typical of major hotel projects in the early automobile age, it was financed by capital investors assisted by public subscription and bond issue. The plans were drawn by the Portland firm of Tourtellotte and Hummel, which later was responsible for the Lithia Springs (Mark Anthony) Hotel (1925) in Ashland, the Redwoods Hotel (1926) in Grants Pass, and the Hotel Baker in Baker. Each of the vintage Tourtelotte and Hummel hotels was held to be forward-looking in its day, a reinforced concrete skyscraper within some eclectic period ornamentation of cast concrete. Indicative of the importance attached to this, the earliest of the firm's major hotel projects in Oregon, was the fact that the Astoria Chamber of Commerce spear-headed the drive for formation of hotel corporation which initiated the project 1921-1922. The Chamber of Commerce made its headquarters in ground story offices upon the hotel's completion in 1924. The hotel was the meeting place of all the community groups, Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions and others, and it was also the transfer station for those who traveled by train or boat to Astoria and embarked from there by train or carriage to the coastal resort areas of Gearhart and Seaside to the south, and it was host to many conventions from business and trade unions. The basement was bustling with salesmen who used the rooms to display their samples and wares.

Tillamook Rock Lighthouse - Tilly, Seaside Oregon

Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is Oregon's only offshore light and the fourth oldest of nine lighthouses now standing on the state's coastline. Its construction, completed in 1881, was an engineering feat involving hazardous landings of men and materials by derrick and breeches buoy from a lighthouse tender anchored off the rock. Its roof was replaced and extra loft added to the keepers' quarters in 1889, at which time openings on the heavy weather sides (south and west) were filled. Its period of service as an aid to navigation extended more than 75 years under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Light House Keeping Service and, from 1939 on, the U.S. Coast Guard. It was superseded by a whistle buoy and decommissioned in 1957. Two years later, it was surplused by the General Services Administration and passed into more than 20 years of disuse under successive private ownerships, during which time ambitious dreams of a novel gambling casino and other enterprises faded.

Baker Hotel, Mineral Wells Texas

Opened just three weeks after the great stock market crash of October 29, 1929, The Baker Hotel represents a period of time, place and values that will never again be approached. Built in a town of about 6,000 people, this 450 room hotel had a meeting capacity of over 2,500 people. Its significance as a social and community focal point is even more profound than its physical presence on the townscape. During the era of "the big band," few musicians missed a stop at this luxurious outpost. The guest register reads as a virtual Who's Who of social, political, cultural and military elite. At least one president and many also-rans had more than a fleeting knowledge of the Baker's mineral waters. Mineral Wells was founded in 1881 by Judge J.A. Lynch who happened accidentally on the magical medicinal properties of his well water. The town quickly developed as a health spa. The Crazy Well was so named for a disordered woman who regularly availed herself of the healing waters. A pavilion was constructed near the well in 1895 and finally in 1910 a hotel, appropriately named The Crazy Hotel, was constructed. This hotel was destroyed by fire in 1925. Realizing the market for a hotel, civic leaders convinced one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the state, T. B. Baker, to build a facility that would respond to that need.

Carysfort Lighthouse, Key Largo Florida

Completed in 1852, the lighthouse, and the reef on which it is located, is named after the HMS Carysfort, which ran aground at the site in October 1770. Funds for a lighthouse were appropriated by Congress in 1837, but due to the Indian Wars, design was not started until 1848, with completion four years later. The design was started by Captain Howard Stansbury, completed by Major Thomas E. Lannard of the Corps of Engineers. J.W.P. Lewis was the Assistant Engineer, in charge of construction. The well known Philadelphia iron works of Merrick and Son was awarded the construction contract who fabricated and preassembled the skeleton structure at their yard before shipping it to Key Largo. The original lighting aparatus, a "revolving Fresnel lenticular illuminating" device (Augustin Jean Fresnel, a French physicist, designed the first dioptic or lenticular light in 1823, describing it as a "curtain of prisms in front of a light and centered around a bull's eye lens") was constructed by Henry LaPaute in Paris. It was first illuminated on March 10, 1852. Colonel J.T. Albert, Chief, Corps of Topographic Engineers prepared a site survey in February, 1845 to determine the need for navigational aids along the Atlantic coastline of Florida. Citing extensive marine traffic in the region and mentioning the numerous and trecherous hazards to shipping, he recommended that a series of lighthouses be constructed on the reefs that extend from Cape Florida to the Tortugas, identifying Carysfort Reef as the most dangerous reef in the 200 mile span. Law 3-3- 1848 reauthorized the construction of a lighthouse to replace an outmoded and ineffective light vessel (moved to Brenton's Reef in Rhode Island), this time specifying a "screw-pile lighthouse", for Carysfort Reef. The existing structure was the first of a series of lighthouses built during this period, spaced so that navigators would "not lose sight of one before coming into view of another". Colonel Albert noted that the Eddystone Lighthouse (1706, John Reynolds, rebuilt 1882) had proved its durability, and the design of this structure, along with others in the English and Irish Channels, was suggested as a model for the Carysfort Lighthouse.

Children's Farm Home School, Corvallis Oregon

The Children's Farm Home began as the dream of Mary Powers (later Mary Powers Riley) to provide a home for "orphaned and otherwise dependent children" in Oregon. It was to be a facility where there was no expectation of adoption, but rather a place where children could live their entire childhoods. Mrs. Powers, who had been an orphan herself, presented her ideas to the Oregon Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) convention in October 1919 in Ashland. The idea was met with favorable response, and the state president asked Mrs. Powers to chair a committee to investigate the need for such a facility. Mrs. Powers selected Mrs. Mary Mallett (Portland), Mrs. Emma Archibald (Tangent), Mr. Alfred C. Schmitt (Albany), Mr. H.C. Seymour (representing Oregon Agricultural College President W.J. Kerr), Mr. W.R. Scott (Albany), and Mr. Walter K. Taylor (Corvallis) to serve on the committee. Their first action was to conduct a survey to determine if Oregon could use this kind of facility. After receiving the names of 2,400 children who might benefit from such a place, the committee recommended that the project move forward, that a board of trustees be selected, that articles of incorporation be created, and that a campaign manager be appointed to secure funds. Thus began the Oregon WCTU's "great adventure in child welfare" that lasted for more than forty years. The Board of Trustees organized and elected the following officers: A.C. Schmitt, president; Mary Powers, first vice president; Walter K. Taylor, second vice-president; H.C. Seymour, secretary; and H. Hirschberg, treasurer. Mr. Schmitt, Mr. Taylor, and Mr. Seymour were charged with preparing the articles of incorporation and the by-laws, as well as submitting the plan to the Child Welfare Commission of Oregon for approval and permission to move forward with the project.

St. Luke's Hospital Complex, Chicago Illinois

Reverend Clinton E. Locke founded St. Luke's Hospital in 1864 as one of the charitable activities of the Grace Episcopal parish. The hospital originally occupied a cottage with seven beds. As the city grew and Locke appealed to other Episcopal parishes for contributions, the hospital expanded. In 1871 it moved to the present Indiana Avenue site and occupied an old boarding house with fifty beds. Between 1882 and 1890 St. Luke's constructed five hospital building pavilions designed by Treat & Foltz which gave the hospital "beautiful and well arranged buildings," and increased the capacity of the hospital to 152 beds. In 1884 the Vestry of the Grace Episcopal Church passed a resolution of thanks on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Clinton Locke's rectorship which singled out the St. Luke's Hospital as a monument to charity and philanthropy. The resolution stated: "In opposition to the fears and misgivings of many he at an early day persisted in organizing the great charity known as St. Luke's Hospital, a work that had its beginnings in humble and obscure rooms but which, through faith and work and broad and liberal management, has reached out so as to include the whole diocese making the charity now the grand work of all the parishes of the state and of the liberally disposed of all good people of the city." In appealing for charitable contributions to the hospital, Locke and the St. Luke's Hospital gained the support of leading Chicagoans and many Prairie Avenue residents, including the Armours, Fields, Pullmans, Crerars, Ryersons, Pecks, Doanes, and Fairbanks. The charitable association accounts for some of this site's historical significance. In order to understand the innovations represented by the extant St. Luke's Hospital buildings, it is necessary to take account of the substantial transitions in late-nineteenth-century hospital practice. Through much of the nineteenth-century nearly all hospitals were charity hospitals. The poor received medical care in the hospital while middle and upper class patients were privately treated in their homes. In the 1880's with major progress in the fields of bacteriology and hygiene, and advances in medical and surgical techniques, the hospital slowly became a more attractive facility for the wealthy. The replacement of private residence with hospital treatment for all classes awaited the development of buildings which provided a degree of social segregation and more amenities than customary in the older charity hospital designs.

Okolona College - Okolona Normal & Industrial School, Okolona Mississippi

The campus played a vital role in the education and vocational training of African Americans in the northeast region of Mississippi during the twentieth century prior to integration of the state's educational facilities.

Hollywood Plantation - The Burrus House, Benoit Mississippi

Hollywood is the only structure associated with the locally prominent Burrus family that remains in Bolivar County, Mississippi. It was constructed by John C. Burrus (1818-1879), who was among the first to settle the county after its lands were removed from Indian control by the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830. Although a native of Huntsville, Alabama, where he practiced law until 1842, Burrus had established a plantation in Bolivar County early enough to appear on that county's first tax roll, taken in 1836. According to the same records for 1840, Burrus's holdings consisted of 913 acres of land, valued at $3,652, and 34 slaves. Burrus continued his absentee ownership until 1842 when, according to family tradition, mistreatment of his slaves caused him to forsake his law career and settle permanently on his Bolivar plantation.

Eaton Elementary School, Hattiesburg Mississippi

The city of Hattiesburg was founded by Capt. William H. Hardy in 1882. Hardy was a pioneer in the timber and railroad industries, and Hardy had the foresight to recognize the potential economic benefits the two industries would create. After a slow beginning, Hattiesburg, named for Hardy's wife, became a boom town. The completion of the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad in 1897 connected the near virgin yellow pine forests of southwest Mississippi with a deep water port and sparked unprecedented growth that saw a small village grow into the state's fourth largest city in less than twenty-five years. The first decade of the Twentieth Century saw a huge increase in population in Hattiesburg creating the need for a rapid growth of educational facilities. The Hattiesburg public school system was created in 1895 when the Board of Aldermen elected the first trustees. Students, under the care on Miss Ann McLeod, the sole teacher, met in a frame structure near the Presbyterian church. A two-story brick building on Main Street housed Hattiesburg's first permanent school building.

Captain Charles Schreiner Mansion, Kerrville Texas

The Captain Charles Schreiner Mansion at 216 Earl Garrett Street in Kerrville, Texas, is an unusual example of a combination of the Romanesque and Chateauesque styles. Designed by the famous Texas architect of the nineteenth century, Alfred Giles, the house was originally constructed in 1879 of native limestone. Unusual as it may seem since limestone was so readily available for building construction, the house was the first limestone structure built in Kerr County. Captain Schreiner, an immigrant from France, built one of the greatest mercantile-banking empires in the Southwest for which his palatial home was symbolic. Charles Schreiner's father, Gustave Adolph Schreiner, was a French nobleman, having been born in the family castle "Reichenstein" at Riguewihr in the Vosges Mountains, upper Alsace, France. The lure of the New World fascinated him to the extent that he decided to start a new life in America. Monsieur Schreiner, his wife Charlotte, and their five children finally settled in San Antonio on September 23, 1852. Unfortunately, Gustave Schreiner died less than three weeks later leaving his eldest son Charles, then a boy of 14 years, with the responsibility of the family.