On May 20, 2014, the Garland (TX) City Council unanimously approved a resolution recognizing the Travis College Hill Addition in Garland as the city's first officially designated historic district. Included in that resolution was Addendum A, the History of Travis College Hill, researched and written by Louis and Kay Moore. The Dallas Morning News published the entire 13-page history online and other media outlets have published excerpts from that history in articles about the new Historic District.
Since that document is crucial to what I will be writing about in this blog, I want to share this with my readers here:
Garland’s South 11th
Street (the first Garland Avenue):
a former prominent
byway worthy of special recognition
Today the name Garland
Avenue represents a stretch of road that extends to the President George
Bush Freeway at one of its ends and passes White Rock Lake (after the street
becomes Garland Road in Dallas) on another.
But a century ago, Garland Avenue was a thoroughfare situated
in a totally different location than is the current byway of that name. Only a
few blocks long, the first Garland Avenue was a wide residential street that
housed some of Garland’s finest homes and some of its most prominent citizens.
The remaining two-block portion of the street produced three Garland mayors, a
GISD school-board president, and five city councilmen (or aldermen, as they
were called until 1956), as well as some of the city’s best-known civic,
political, and religious leaders.
Garland residents from the early part of the last century
recall it as Garland’s silk-stocking district.1,2 It was believed to be the first
street in town to have concrete sidewalks. 3 Its dwellings represented some of
the finest examples of that day’s architecture—definitely a coveted spot for
families of that era to make their homes.
The fact that the first Garland Avenue was titled to bear the name of
its city hints of the street’s preeminence.
Today this street is known to Garland citizens as South 11th Street. Although
only a few of those grand homes of a former day exist, many of these almost
100-year-old structures have been painstakingly maintained and restored. If
they could talk, they would tell of their owners’ hosting weddings and wedding
receptions, the lying-in-state of deceased loved ones, countless teas and club
meetings, and parties honoring current and future political leaders, including
both former Presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush when they were making
early runs for office.
This report will explain why this street and the surrounding
addition became so prominent and will examine the historic context in which the
addition was created. It also will give a summary of each dwelling in the
remaining intact two-block area and will demonstrate why this rare collection
of Garland residences from bygone eras merits special recognition that
acknowledges their distinction.
The context:
Garland was formed from the merger of two settlements—Embree
and Duck Creek. A rivalry had ensued as the area began to grow around the Santa
Fe Railroad depot. To settle a dispute about which town should have the post
office, postal officials opted to move the post office between the two towns
and name it Garland, to honor U.S. Attorney General A.H. Garland. 4 No vote was
ever taken by either township to merge with the other, says Garland historian
Mike Hayslip. The merger simply began occurring after the post office issue and
a parallel court suit were settled. With mail to both Duck Creek and Embree now
addressed to Garland, other official government records, such as the federal
census, began to follow suit in using the name Garland for both areas. In 1891
the City of Garland was formally incorporated, marking the official beginning
of the City of Garland, he says. Before that neither Embree nor Duck Creek had
been legally incorporated and officially recognized. 5
Two decades after the legal incorporation of Garland,
townspeople of the new Texas city of Garland continued their efforts toward fashioning
a consolidated community that would have a separate identity from either of its
former antecedent towns.
In 1910, Garland was a stand-alone, small rural town of 804
people. By 1920 the city’s population almost doubled to 1,421. 6 Only decades
later would anyone even begin to fathom this tiny community as becoming the fifth
largest city in the huge, world-class Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.7
That crucial decade between 1910 and 1920 was formative not
only for the city’s growth but also for the new city’s identity and future.
In this tumultuous decade, which saw the nation plunge into World
War I and emerge as a leading world power:
1.
Garland’s business center served rural residents
from miles around who arrived in their horse-drawn carriages and wagons for
their weekly shopping and other activities. The hub of economic activity was
the downtown area formed around the city’s new “Square”, which was deeded to
the city in 1899 after the “great fire” destroyed much of the town’s commercial
center. 8 The
people who operated these centers of commerce lived either close by in the
countryside or within the new city’s limits.
2.
The migration from farm to city that was
beginning to occur all across America focused the attention of local farmers on
Garland as a place for better educational and advancement opportunities for
their children and better socialization means for their entire families. During
this decade some built “second” homes in Garland to take advantage of the
opportunities the new city afforded and others moved their families entirely to
the new city. 9
3.
Garland found itself swept up in the nation’s
shift from the old “horse-and-buggy” days to the modern era of electric
trolleys and gasoline-driven automobiles.
Garland was targeted to become a major stop on the new Interurban
electric trolley line linking Dallas to Greenville. The Interurban was somewhat
akin to the DART rail system of today that links Dallas with its suburbs. 10
Amid the excitement of the era, those with a keen eye for
development began to look for ways to help Garland grow by creating “additions”
(now called subdivisions) that would house newcomers. One of these new
additions, which was among the larger ones, was the Interurban Land Company’s
Travis College Hill Addition, which was legally platted and incorporated on
January 3, 1913, utilizing farm land on the western “outskirts” of Garland, 11 now part of
that which is designated by current Garland planners as “Uptown Garland”. 12
Travis College Hill Addition was carved out of a 73 1/3-acre tract
owned at the time by early Garland pioneers Richard C. and Sallie F. Walker
Wyatt. The tract originally was part of the Letter Patent No. 245 of the
Nacogdoches District of Dallas County from Texas Governor E. M. Pease to James
L. Blue on June 2, 1854. 13
Developer R.O. Travis joined with Garland landowner and
community leader Wyatt to inaugurate the Travis College Hill Addition on Wyatt’s
property on the western edge of town that abutted the planned route of the new
Interurban trolley line.
Uncertainty exists in directly linking the Interurban Land
Company, which developed the addition, with the Eastern Traction Company, which
planned and owned the Interurban. However, a stated goal of the Eastern
Traction Company was to increase the populations of city-stops along the
Interurban route by at least 25 percent in order to make the Interurban more
profitable. Thus, the land company’s actions meshed with the Eastern Traction
Company’s goal.
14
Landowner Wyatt was a brother-in-law to Eastern Traction
Company stockholder and Garland civic leader A.J. Beaver. Wyatt’s family home
was situated on the northern end of what is now 11th Street,
slightly north of the boundaries of the new Travis College Hill Addition. 15
A.J. Beaver and his nephew, farmer James Beaver, and James’
wife, Edith (for whom Garland ISD’s Edith Beaver Elementary School was later named),
became some of the first homeowners and residents in the new addition. 16
The Travis College Hill Addition would have been
particularly attractive to buyers because the Interurban railway was designed to
provide a means for residents to quickly get to and from downtown Dallas and/or
downtown Greenville and all spots in between. Eastbound travelers were supposed
to travel quickly to such cities as Rockwall, Royse City, and Greenville. The
westbound route was to run straight from Garland to downtown Dallas. Garland
was viewed as a major hub for this particular Interurban line. At the time
similar Interurban trolleys were developing all across Texas to link major cities
and their neighbors.
17
In that day on the eve of Henry Ford’s expansion of the
automobile few people had private cars; most people still traveled by horse and
buggy. Although it is not known exactly where railcar stops were planned in
Garland, the proposed route of the Interurban was to travel directly up and down
Mewshaw Avenue (now Avenue D), which was the local link to the main road to Dallas.
Mewshaw formed the southern boundary of the new Travis College Hill Addition18 ; very
likely a stop near the addition would have been contemplated.
Thus, a property owner could have been attracted to buy a
piece of property in the Travis College Hill Addition with the enticement of
being only a stone’s throw from an Interurban stop.
The new addition also held a number of other conveniences that added to
its appeal.
The original 42 lots in Travis College Hill were either (depending on
their location) 50- or 65-feet wide by either 190- or 175-feet in length. 19 The lot sizes
were adequate not only for houses but also water wells, outhouses, chicken coops,
small barns, gardens, and small orchards, all of which flourished in the early
days of the addition. Evidence of these elements remain today in the yards and
homes of some of the current addition residents.
Property owners in the new Travis College Hill Addition not
only would have enjoyed close proximity to shopping around Garland’s “Square”
but also an easy walk to the city’s four Protestant churches—Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian, and Christian (Disciples)—that formed the nucleus of Garland’s bustling
religious life in that day. 20
The new addition also had adjacent to its northeast corner the
sole educational institution in town. At that time Garland had only one school,
which was situated between what was then “Hill Street” and “Thorpe Street” at
“First Street” (today’s Avenues A and B and 9th Street). The school
accommodated all grades. Previously it had been known as Garland College, a subscription
school founded in 1887. Its curriculum covered primary, high school and college
levels, thus the name “college”. Voters in 1901 approved a school district,
today known as the Garland ISD, and held public classes in the Garland College
building.
21 At some point the college curriculum was dropped, but no records seem to
exist of the exact date; it could have occurred around the time of the 1901
election and decision for the school district to take over the school building.
GISD was never intended to include college-level curriculum, Hayslip says. 22
According to
topographical maps, the school also sat on the crest of one of the higher elevations
in the original city. 23 Perhaps this was the reason Avenue A was originally
named “Hill Street”, although some have wondered whether the street was named
for Confederate General A.P. Hill, who had no connection with Garland except
through Southern history.
Thus the Addition’s name likely was derived from:
1.
R.O. Travis, the developer
2.
Its proximity to the school, once known as a
“college”, and
3.
The location of the “college” on the “hill”.
At the heart of the Travis College Hill addition was the
very first Garland Avenue, a name that would continue to be used repeatedly throughout
the city’s history for other thoroughfares. The fact that the present 11th
Street was originally named Garland Avenue hints of its preeminence in the
addition and thus in the 21-year-old city as well.
Because of everything already mentioned, the new addition
began attracting—and would continue to do so—many of Garland’s civic, religious,
commercial, and educational leaders. Later in this document we will identify by
name and date the collection of mayors, city council members, school officials,
and civic, business, and religious leaders who lived on one stretch of old
Garland Avenue.
As the decade progressed, the Eastern Traction Company
slipped into bankruptcy and then oblivion after citizens, including Garland
stockholders, began to question how their dollars were being spent to build the
new railway. The Interurban never ran between Dallas and Garland or Garland to
Greenville. The Interurban dream was soon demolished by the upheaval of World
War I and the arrival of Henry Ford’s mass-produced Model T automobile. Over
the next two decades other Interurban lines across Texas deteriorated and faded
from history, too.
24
While urban archaeologists have much difficulty even finding
remnants of the construction sites for the Eastern Traction Company’s trolley
line through Garland, the Travis College Hill Addition still exists as a
historical monument to Garland’s life a century ago and the dream of an
electric-car line that never was.
In the intervening 101 years most of the historic homes in
the original Travis College Hill Addition have been destroyed and the land on
which they sat used for church buildings and church parking lots. Today only a tiny
core of the old addition remains, centered mostly on that which lies between
the current Avenues B and D along South 11th Street (the old Garland
Avenue).
The six most historic homes, which date to 1915-1918, in the two-block
strip being recommended to become Garland's first Historic Residential
Neighborhood sat on two or three lots each. Except for the property at 313 S.
11th St., over the years the combined lots for the other five homes were
subdivided to make way for the five additional homes, built between the 1930s
and 2001, and for road expansions (Avenues B and D, today a.k.a. State Highways
78 and 66).
25
The homes:
301 South 11th
Street—Perhaps one of the most significant residences in the two-block
area, this yellow one-story is an extremely fine representation of the
Craftsman-style home that was popular in the early 1900s. Andrew Jackson Beaver
built the house. He was a grocer whose store was situated on the town square’s
north side near where Jones Hardware now stands. Beaver was a Garland alderman
and was married to the former Ella Walker, who had moved to Texas from
Tennessee and was a sister to Sallie F. Walker Wyatt (mentioned in the earlier
paragraph about Travis College Hill.) Built in 1915, it housed the Beavers and
their two children who still lived at home—Ilma and Ralph. Beaver obtained
plans for the house from his wife’s cousin, Slater B. Wyatt, a Plano doctor who
had built an almost identical one on Plano’s 16th Street in 1908
(the Wyatt house remains standing in Plano and bears a historical marker). 301
South 11th backed up to a cotton field in the area currently
occupied by the Garland High School campus (high school was still being
conducted in a building on 9th Street; the current high-school site
was farm land until the new campus was finished in 1936).
Originally painted gray in color, the spacious front porch
with its distinctive Craftsman-style columns was the scene of the 1919 wedding
of the Beavers’ daughter, Ilma Hortense, to Samuel Robert Weir, who operated a
drugstore on the north side of the square, where Baker Furniture is today. The
Weirs and their daughter, Hortense, born a year later, lived in the dwelling alongside
the Beavers until 1924, when they moved to a house of their own. However, after
A.J. Beaver (who also served as Garland school board president) died in 1935,
the Weirs moved back in to take care of Mrs. Beaver until her passing a few
months later in 1936. Sam Weir died in 1963, but Mrs. Weir lived on in the
house almost until the time of her passing at age 91 in 1988. (The Weirs’
daughter Virginia and granddaughter Elizabeth Ann had their wedding receptions
on the site as well.)
Now beautifully maintained by current residents Dale and Hillary
Adams, 301 South 11th Street is painted butter yellow with a red
front door. The current Avenue B, which passes the dwelling on its north side,
did not exist in the house’s early days and was the home’s driveway, which the
city expanded for constructing a street when the new high school opened in 193626
309 South 11th
Street—This one-story frame cottage once was the home of Fred Holmes and
his wife, Willie Kate Holmes. Fred was a printer for the Garland Daily News and
later for other papers in the U.S.; Willie Kate was a clubwoman from Garland’s
early days and organized the Willie Kate Holmes Preschool Mothers Club. She was daughter of Will Asa Holford,
longtime editor of the Garland Daily News. Her son, Bill Holmes, and her
daughter, Sue Holmes Watkins, both have had lifetimes of civic involvement in
Garland; Sue worked for the Garland Daily
News and still writes a column about Garland for the Neighbors Go section
of the Dallas Morning News. Bill wrote
an article of memoirs about growing up on 11th Street as he lived at
the 309 South 11th Street address.. 27
The home currently is owned by Louis and Kay Wheeler Moore
and is maintained as investment property.
311 South 11th
Street—Carl “Mac” McCarty and wife Ann, who lived in 309 South 11th
Street after the Holmes family relocated and while their three children
attended Garland High School in the late 1950s and early 1960s, built this
one-story tan brick structure on a portion of the original 309 S. 11th
St. property after their children were grown. Then they sold the 309 property.
As a widow Ann McCarty remained in the home almost up until her passing in
2007. The three McCarty children—Jerry, Carolyn Eads, and Carl—currently own
the home. Carl, an engineer, is the house’s present occupant. 28
313 South 11th
Street—This one-story, Prairie-style frame home dates to 1916 and originally
was the home of James E. and Edith Lola McCollum Beaver. Jim Beaver was a
farmer; Edith managed the school cafeteria when all 12 grades met beneath one
roof on 9th Street before the current high school was built in 1936. The family
donated some of its farmland off Jupiter near Buckingham so the school district
could build Edith Beaver Elementary, named for Mrs. Beaver and opened in 1960.
Jim was a nephew to A.J. Beaver, mentioned earlier as having built the house at
301 S. 11th. 29
Shortly after Jim Beaver passed in 1938, H.A. (Bud) and
Evelyn Walker purchased the home and lived in it until the early 1960s. Bud
Walker was president of Garland’s First National Bank and became a Garland
councilman and later mayor. Evelyn was a long-time Garland elementary-school
teacher. In a major renovation in the early 1950s the Walkers removed the large
L-shaped front porch to build an additional bedroom, greatly expanded the
living and dining rooms, and added closets in the master bedroom, which had
none.30
Current owners and occupants of the house are Louis and Kay
Wheeler Moore. Kay grew up down the street at 412 South 11th and
remembers bringing her homework papers to 313 to give to Mrs. Walker, her 2nd-grade
teacher. The Moores have reinstated a large front porch, added a music room, converted
an enclosed breezeway and old garage into an office suite, built a new two-car
garage inside a gated courtyard, and have added a two-story crafts studio in a
separate building in the back yard, among many other updates. 31
317 South 11th
Street—This new lot was created in 2013 when the Garland City Council voted
unanimously to close West Avenue C from South 11th Street to the
alley between the homes on the street and Garland High School and sell the
right of way to Louis and Kay Wheeler Moore, who own both sides of that street
segment. Once mostly used as a driveway for the 401 S. 11th
property, the street segment in recent years was nicknamed by the neighborhood “Marijuana Avenue” because of the rampant
illegal drug activity that occurred there on almost all school days. After the Moores obtained ownership of
the right of way, they merged 20 feet from their 401 S. 11th
investment property with the 40-foot right of way to create in a replat a new 60-foot-by-190-foot
lot that meets today’s city standards for development.32 The Moores
intend either to secure an historic home similar in style and period to the
neighborhood and have the house moved on to the new lot or to build a new home
that would be a replica of their home at 313 S. 11th as it existed
before the renovations of Mr. and Mrs. Walker and other later owners after the
1950s.
401 South 11th
Street—Early physician Dr. Clarence S. Brown built this white-frame
residence in the airplane-bungalow Craftsman style. It features an oversized
48-inch wide front door, common in vintage homes to ensure that caskets could
pass through the door when a loved one lay in state after passing. Dr. Brown
delivered children in prominent families including A.R. Davis Jr. in 1911. 33 Somewhere
between about 1928 and 1932 the owners applied a “horizontal slice” to the
dwelling and removed the top story (or pop-up story of one or two rooms) to
relocate it in an adjacent lot as a separate dwelling. This was not uncommon in
the Depression Era as families sought ways to generate income and could sell or
rent the smaller portion as a separate residence. Among other original owners
were J.M. and Allie Hamilton, whose daughter Allie Merle married Claude Shugart
and taught for many years in Garland schools. Allie Merle’s daughter, Dr. Jill
Shugart, is a former superintendent of the Garland Independent School District.
In latter years it became the home of Leo Alphonsus Whitman
and his wife, Irene Mary Dvoracek Whitman. Both were from families that were
part of the early settlement of Rowlett, a community east of Garland.34
Louis and Kay Wheeler Moore now own the home and use it as
investment property.
403 South 11th
Street—This modern brick one-story replaced the frame “horizontal-slice”
layer that formerly was the top pop-up story of the Hamilton home at 401. In
2001 Tom Cooper of Cooper Concrete Co. razed the frame dwelling that had been
moved onto the lot and had the current brick house built for his mother-in-law,
Sue Harbor.35
411 South 11th—The
walls of this spacious, expansive two-story frame hold memories of political
receptions that saw both Presidents Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush, as well
as countless other Republican Party hopefuls and office-holders, as honorees.
GOP volunteers Charles and Winifred Stokes presided over gathering after
gathering in this gracious home, which could accommodate large numbers of
guests. As a child Charles had visited in the home of his aunt and uncle, who
lived across Avenue D from 401 South 11th. Later he recalled gazing
longingly at the commanding residence, with a large screened-in porch that faced
Avenue D, and hoping that some day it might be his home. 36 Ultimately
he and Winifred did purchase it and therein reared their four children, which
include former Dallas County State District Judge Charles A. Stokes and
daughter Nell Stokes Moser, a Washington D.C. architect who helped design the Pentagon
restoration after the 9/11 attacks.
Another long-term owner was G. Lester Davis, of Hudson Davis
and later Cole & Davis Dry Goods on the Garland Square. G. Lester Davis was
an early-day president of the Garland Chamber of Commerce and was a Garland
mayor.
Contractor Jim Bird and his wife, Cindy, purchased the home
from the Stokes family after Charles and Winifred moved to care facilities. Jim
and Cindy Bird, who have done extensive work to maintain the grandeur of this
historic home, also own 1010 West Avenue D, which fronts onto South 11th
and is the former home of longtime Garland
Daily News publisher and former Garland mayor William Henry Bradfield. 37
416 South 11th—Longtime
residents of this white frame one-story were Rev. James McCabe Hunt and his
wife Emma L. Crozier Hunt. Members of the Hunt family lived in this house from
1937 until the passing of the last Hunt child, Mary Hunt Brown, in 2002. Rev.
Hunt was pastor of Antioch Baptist Church (predecessor to Garland’s First
Baptist Church) from 1909 to 1914 and is credited with helping the sparring
Antioch and the existing First Baptist congregations mend fences and reunite.
He later held pastorates in Killeen, Grapevine, and McKinney, among others,
before he and Mrs. Hunt returned to Garland in retirement. He was active as
pastor emeritus at First Baptist, just down the street. Mrs. Hunt was a gifted
hostess; the large living room of the home often was lined with participants in
women’s study clubs and other organizations of which Mrs. Hunt and her daughter
Louise were members. Louise, who remained single and who lived in the home to
care for her parents, was longtime typing teacher at Garland High School and
sponsor of the Owl’s Nest.
“Brother” Hunt died in 1957 and Mrs. Hunt in 1973.38
When Mary Hunt Brown passed away, the family donated the
dwelling to First Baptist Church to be used to house missionaries on stateside
assignment. Rev. Hunt’s sister, Bertha Hunt, had been a missionary to Brazil,
so the family wanted to honor her memory with this gift. The home was used
actively as a missionary residence for several years but has been vacant for
nearly four years.
39
Jim and Cindy Bird are actively seeking to purchase the home
from First Baptist and are eager to restore it to its former grandeur.
412 South 11th—Originally
the tract of land on which this salmon-colored brick one-story was built was a
part of the Hunt property at 416, where it was used as Rev. Hunt’s prolific
fruit orchard. In 1951 J.D. and Mable Wheeler approached the Hunt family with a
desire to purchase the orchard property for constructing their residence. After
initial hesitation, the Hunts ultimately agreed to subdivide the land. On the
tract, which extends to a full one-block depth, the Wheelers first built a
miniscule, one-bedroom frame cottage that faced 10th street and
lived in it for eight years until 1960, when they built the three-bedroom, brick
one-story that faces 11th.
James Doyce Wheeler had arrived in Garland in 1939 to work
as the clerk at the Garland post office when Garland was a town of less than
2,000. In 1941 he married Mable Evelyn Miller of Delta County and brought her
to Garland as his bride. Their first home was a rented room in the home of Mrs.
Texie Tomlinson on north 11th Street. Ultimately J.D. became
assistant postmaster under F. Ben Crush and then acting postmaster, while Mable
first was secretary to the Garland schools superintendent and later ran a
public mailing and addressing service. After he retired from the post office,
J.D. had a long career in Garland real estate and printing.
Mable was a leading Garland clubwoman, with involvements in
the Story League, and Garland Federation of Women’s Clubs and a founder of the
Garland Women’s Activities Building. Together with J.D. she helped put the
Republican Party on the map in Garland and was precinct chairman, worked for
candidates, and helped hold elections. Their daughter, Kay Wheeler Moore, is a
veteran Texas journalist, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and an author. After J.D.
passed away in 1993, Mable remained in her home until a month before her
passing in 2005.
Mable’s granddaughter, Dr. Catharine Moore Welch, had as her
fondest wish that she could hold her wedding reception in the back yard of her
grandmother’s home, which was resplendent with flowers in the spring. Although
Mable was deceased in 2007 at the time of the wedding, Louis and Kay Moore
continue to own the property for investment purposes. So on May 26, 2007, as
Catharine married Casey Welch, once again 11th Street was the scene
of wedding festivities as it had been in the 1920s and 1930s.40
404 South 11th—This
one-story white frame bungalow was the longtime home of Claude Talmadge Kenney
and his wife, Nora Mae Ramsey Kenney. Nora was the daughter of Garland
physician Dr. Frank Lafayette Ramsey, the first doctor to practice in Rose Hill
and who later had an office in the Garland bank building. 41
From the front room of her 11th Street home Nora
taught piano for decades despite being immensely physically challenged.
Countless Garland youngsters learned piano under Mrs. Kenney’s tutelage. Claude
was a landscaper for private homes. Interestingly, since the Kenneys’ deaths, Ron
Bush, a landscape man who has a private business, and his family have owned the
home.
400 South 11th—Another
home of the “airplane-bungalow” Craftsman style, this dwelling was the longtime
residence of Curtis Crossman Sr. and his wife, Dixie Tucker Crossman. As with
the Stokes and Wheeler residences, the Crossman home was the scene of more club
functions and political receptions than anyone could count. Dixie was the
quintessential Southern hostess; an invitation to her home was a coveted
experience, to be sure.42
Interestingly Dixie had grown up down the street as one of
many daughters in the home of Elihu Henderson Tucker and his wife, Aurelia, at
201 South 11th. Charming stories abound of the Tucker daughters
marrying in the flower-bedecked garden of the Tucker home.43 Curtis was
the son of Garland pioneer and mayor George W. Crossman, who was born in South
America and arrived in Garland as a college-educated man who edited the Embree
newspaper. 44
Curtis Crossman Sr. operated an insurance agency on the Garland Square and was
a city councilman.
Current owners are Greg and Becky Baxter, who have renovated
the home as well as built a highly visible outdoor kitchen and living area in
the backyard. The Baxters’ daughter, Ivy, married in a ceremony on the house’s
front lawn; both Ivy and the Baxters’ son, Grant, had their wedding receptions
held in the back yard.
Former homes on South
11th:
Although only memories remain of the four grand homes that
previously occupied the east side of South 11th between Avenues B
and C, they deserve brief sketches of mention, since they also housed important
Garlandites who played a key role in this community.
316 South 11th
Street—Early residents were Walter W. Gulley, who had a Ford business in
town, and his wife, Ada.45 This home, built in about 1919, was almost a twin in
design to the Crossman home at 400 South 11th. Later, in the 1950s, it belonged
to the Robert Riker family. A Riker daughter, Sylvia Mitchell, kept the home in
the family and lived in it until it was torn down.46
308 South 11th
Street—Home of Ray and Gretchen Goodson. Ray was an architect and owned a lumberyard.
The house was a white brick structure with a porch across its front. 47
304 South 11th
Street—Home of Willis Carney Jamison and wife, Myrtle Alabama Brown Jamison. 48 Originally
from Grayson County, W.C. Jamison moved to Garland in the early 1920s and
quickly established himself as a city leader, as he served four consecutive
terms as an alderman from 1924 to 1929 and then mayor of Garland in 1930-31 and
1934-35. He was a sales manager of the cottonseed breeding plant.
Before the Jamisons the home belonged to Ben Jackson, the
longtime Chevrolet dealer and Garland alderman. 49
300 South 11th
Street—A two-story belonging to Charles Mason, a well-known Garland
carpenter, and his wife Fannie. Kids in the neighborhood loved to play around
in the wood-shavings in his workshop and admire the wood products and the tools
to shape them. This home was finished in 1919. 50, 51
The properties that comprised this square block in March 1992 were sold
according to Dallas County records to Garland’s First Presbyterian Church,
which then tore the homes down and built a parking lot on the north side and
maintains the southern half of the block as a green space awaiting future
church expansion. Starting in the 1980s, Garland's First Presbyterian Church
and First Baptist Church purchased many of the other historic homes in Travis
College Hill and tore them down for new buildings and parking lots. An effort
in the 1990s by First Baptist Church to secure most of the remaining houses was
unsuccessful after a strong backlash from Preservationist-oriented owners in
the existing neighborhood.
Conclusion:
Residents of what remains of Travis College Hill Addition
today are proud of their neighborhood’s history and its legacy of influence on
the life of Garland for more than a century. Because of its important and fascinating
history and its strong ties to Garland’s long-ago life, the residents request
that Garland City Council designate their remnant of the Travis College Hill
Addition that lies along South 11th Street from West Avenue B to
West Avenue D as Garland’s First Historic Residential Neighborhood and that the
street in the district be symbolically renamed “Old Garland Avenue”.
Resources:
1.
Interview with Hortense Weir Smith (September
28, 2013), who grew up on 11th Street in the 1920s
2.
Interview with Margaret McDaniel Branham
(November 2002), who spent a portion of her married life as an 11th
Street resident.
3.
Smith interview
4.
Garland: A
Contemporary History, by Richard Abshire (a publication of the Garland
Chamber of Commerce,) San Antonio: Historical Publishing Network, 2009) 5
5.
Interview with noted Garland historian Michael
R. Hayslip (January 9, 2014)
9.
Smith interview
10. Eastern Texas Traction Company, A Greenville
to Dallas Interurban Railway 1913, by Jerry L. Brewer, November 14, 1989
11. Dallas
Abstract No. 60241
12. New
proposed Garland Development Code map, 2014
13.
Dallas County Abstract 60228
14. Eastern
Texas Traction Company, 6
15. Smith
interview
16. Smith
interview
17. Eastern
Texas Traction Company, 1
18. Eastern
Texas Traction Company, map, 22
19. The addition’s
original plat, 1913
20. Garland: A Contemporary History, 55
21. Ibid.
22. Hayslip interview
23. Nagle, Witt,
Rollins Engineering Co.’ “Datum Mean Sea Level” topographical map dated 1922
showing the elevations in Garland in that era. Email from Jerry Flook of
Preservation Garland, November 18, 2013
24. Eastern
Texas Traction Company, 12
25.
Dallas County deeds and records for the properties
in the neighborhood
26. Smith
interview
27. Interview
with Bill Holmes (September 28, 2013), who grew up on 11th Street
28. Various
conversations with Carl McCarty and Carolyn McCarty Eads
29. Smith
interview
30. Conversations
with Walker family members over various years.
31. The Moores are the authors of this
report.
32. Garland
City Council minutes August 13, 2013 and November 19, 2013)
33. Interview
with Michael R. Hayslip, October 29, 2013
34. Smith
interview
35. Moore
36. Stokes
family conversations
37. Recollections
of Louis and Kay Wheeler Moore, who previously owned the home at 1010 West
Avenue D
38. Recollections
of Kay Wheeler Moore, who grew up next door to the Hunts
39. Conversations
with Crozier Brown, Mary Brown’s surviving son
40. “In
the Garden Alone”, Way Back in the
Country Garden, Kay Wheeler Moore (Garland, TX: Hannibal Books, 2010),
37-43
41. “Rose
Hill’s Pioneer Doctor”, Leola Searles, Proud
Heritage III, Pioneer Families of Dallas County Vol. III (Dallas County
Pioneer Association), 314-315
42. Recollections
of Kay Wheeler Moore, who grew up living near the Crossman family
43. Branham
interview
44. Hayslip
interview, September 18, 2013
45. Smith
interview
46. Kay
Wheeler Moore recollections
47. Smith
interview
48. Smith
interview
49. Smith
interview
50. Smith
interview
51. Holmes
interview
