In its early days in the 1920s, Castle Heights was just a grassy hill at the end of the streetcar line, with a clear view of the Amicable building downtown. The city of Waco has since grown miles beyond the hill, and oaks and magnolia trees have grown up to shade the neighborhood. Through the decades, Castle Heights has remained a prime address for the Waco establishment, impervious to inner-city blight.

Castle Heights has an unusually strong identity as a neighborhood. The construction of the earliest homes, circa 1888, lay outside Waco city limits, and when developers plotted the neighborhood in 1923, they expected it to serve as an elite residential area marketed to the professional and upper class. Residents fought back in court in the 1930s when Waco sought to annex them. The neighborhood incorporated as the Village of Castle Heights in 1939 and elected a mayor, A. Baker Duncan, father of modern-day civic leader Malcolm Duncan. However, the village disbanded in 1945 and was annexed into the city of Waco.

Castle Heights, with its then-novel curving streets, was an example of the early twentieth-century City Beautiful Movement, an urban planning philosophy that sought to link social issues to architectural design and encourage civic pride and engagement. Large plots of land with space for big backyards and attached garages attracted potential residents.

The eclectic architectural styles of Castle Heights provide good examples of design from several different time periods, including Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Spanish Eclectic Revival, and Minimal Traditional homes. Following World War II, the neighborhood saw a large boom in construction of homes in the ranch style. Many houses are also notable because they were designed by famous Waco architectural firms such as Birch D. Easterwood and Son, or designer of the Amicable building, Roy Lane.

Through over a decade of effort by neighborhood leaders, Castle Heights became Waco’s first historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The district included on the historical marker encompasses most of the area north of Austin Avenue from Thirty-Third Street to Thirty-Ninth Street, including Cottonland Castle, the 1890s Gothic stone structure on Austin Avenue that gave the neighborhood its name.

Today, Castle Heights remains one of the most sought-out neighborhoods in the city. Its well-preserved homes serve as physical evidence of twentieth-century architectural and urban design in Waco. 

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The Rotan-Dossett House is one of several preserved homes in Waco built by prominent figures of McLennan County. Though not a pioneer of the area, Edward Rotan was a major economic figure—a classic nineteenth-century capitalist. He came to McLennan County from Tennessee in 1867 and obtained a job as a schoolteacher. He subsequently worked for a wholesale grocery, bought out the business, and later served as the president of the largest bank in Waco for thirty-five years. Concurrent with all of his successes, Rotan used $80,000 he made in a real estate transaction to build himself a mansion which later became known as one of the most distinctive houses in Waco.

Rotan-Dossett House stands unique in the South as a result of its differing architectural style. While most large nineteenth century southern houses were designed in the Greek Revival or Victorian style, Rotan-Dossett House holds the influence of the Shingle, Stick, and Queen Anne styles in the structure. Though common in New England, these architectural elements were rarely seen in the South during this time.

Completed in 1891, wood and locally made orange brick largely composed the home’s exterior. Around 1900, Rotan added a two-story porch to the front of the home which today adds to its distinctive character. Quartersawn oak composed the interior rooms, and imitation leather wallpaper lined the halls. Ornate detailing decorates the doorframes, fireplace mantels, and staircase, and several stained glass windows line the second floor landing, adding to the house’s stately grandeur. 

When Rotan eventually decided to sell his beautiful home, another successful businessman, Andrew J. Dossett, purchased it in 1917. The son of a small farmer, he first came from Mississippi to Cameron, Texas, where he bought a cotton compress warehouse. While living in Cameron he owned the Cameron First National Bank and a bank at Ben Arnold. He later bought into the Waco cotton compress warehouse, moved to Waco, and continued purchasing other warehouses around the state to amass his fortune.

Over the years, only minor alterations have been made to the interior of Rotan-Dossett House. Owners added a few bathrooms and permanent shut a few doors. A circulating hot water radiator system was also installed. In 1979, the home was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Descendants of A. J. Dossett today continue to reside in the historic downtown home. Current residents Elizabeth and Stuart Smith completed renovations on the exterior of the home to restore some of the damage wrought by over a century of use. Although Rotan-Dossett House remains a private residence, it stands today as a nod to a period of prosperity in Waco in part brought about by the efforts of prominent businessmen such as Edward Rotan and A. J. Dossett. 

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Joining the recently completed Amicable building, the Praetorian building towered over the city in 1915 as one of the first skyscrapers in Central Texas. The building’s unique architecture and distinctive character ensured that it continued to serve Wacoans long after the renowned Praetorian Insurance Company closed its offices.

The Modern Order of Praetorians, a nonprofit fraternal insurance organization founded by Charles Gardner in Dallas in 1898, rapidly expanded in the early twentieth century to cities throughout Texas. At that time, five of the state’s largest insurance companies held home offices in the rapidly urbanizing Waco, contributing to the city’s reputation in trade publications as the “Insurance City of Texas.” This prestige, combined with Waco’s rapid development, drew the attention of the Praetorians as the fraternal organization searched for new locations, and in 1911, a Praetorian office opened in Waco.

The Praetorians employed C. W. Bulger and Son to design a high-rise building to house a Waco chapter. The Dallas-based firm, strongly influenced by the Chicago architectural style, had previously designed the Praetorian’s home office in Dallas in 1909 and based the Waco building off a similar design. Begun in 1913 and completed in 1915, the seven-story building featured a gray granite base, terra-cotta tile detailing, large show windows, and the Praetorian shield logo. The interior featured marble wainscoting, tile floors, and high ceilings with deep cornices and pilaster at its construction, although alterations to the building in the 1950s removed some of these details.

The opportunity to lease space in Waco’s newest skyscraper clearly interested many Waco businesses. By 1916, floors three through seven housed tenants, with the Praetorian offices on the sixth floor. The seventh floor housed operations for several railroad companies which played an integral role in twentieth-century commerce in Waco. When First State Bank and Trust rented out the first floor and basement for its operations between 1917 and 1933, the Praetorian building became known as one of the most attractive and functional bank buildings throughout Texas.

Over the years, the historic building has borne several names. In 1934, it became known as the Service Mutual building. The name changed to the Southwestern building in 1956 when the Praetorians sold it as a part of the consolidation process that accompanied the firm’s shift from a fraternal organization to a mutual company a few years later. For short periods of time, the building was also known as Franklin Tower, One Liberty Place, and the Liberty building as it changed hands between different insurance companies.

Following its sale, the once grand Praetorian building entered into a period of disuse. For a few short years between 1962 and 1965, the Veterans Administration operated from its premises. However, tenancy dropped rapidly after 1965, and beginning in 1973, the building sat vacant.

Yet some saw the unique structure's value and sought to restore its historic dignity. W. S. Service Corporation later purchased the building and identified it as a candidate for rehabilitation and renovation. On July 26, 1984, the National Register of Historic Places added the building to its list as an exemplar of the Chicago School of architecture. In 1989, a new owner dubbed it Williams Tower, although it became known as the Praetorian building once again beginning in 1996.

Though the Praetorian building of Dallas was torn down in 2013, the Waco Praetorian remains largely the same as it did in 1915. The building’s current owner, Peter Ellis, received a tax incentive in 2013 to renovate and restore the building. Several floors today contain loft-style apartments. Other portions of the building house Anthem Studios, and the owner continues to consider options for opening a restaurant and retail stores in the future.

Just as the extravagant structure reflected twentieth-century prosperity at the time of its construction, the newly renovated Praetorian building towers over the city today, an integral part of the reinvigoration of downtown Waco. 

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The McDermott Motors building is a prime example of the way in which many of Waco’s notable architectural structures have been adapted throughout history in order to continually serve the city.

Wilford Dees McDermott opened a Buick dealership in Waco with the help of his father-in-law, Robert Buchanan, in 1926. Buchanan hoped running a business would help McDermott and his daughter settle down and become more responsible, and thus provided McDermott with the funds to construct a brand new building for the dealership on Washington Avenue which opened to the public on November 1, 1928.

The McDermott Motors building reflected the extravagant tastes of its owner and namesake. McDermott commissioned renowned Waco architect Milton Scott to design a Spanish Colonial Revival-style building, complete with a flat red tile roof, Mediterranean-influenced transom windows, and terra-cotta details. The showroom featured decorative spiral columns and scrolled metal balconies, as well as an embellished fireplace. McDermott filled the state-of-the-art facilities with the newest available technology and overbuilt the front portion of the store to accommodate future expansions.

Unfortunately, the McDermotts’s extravagant spending combined with a tough economy led to the business’ end at the onset of the Great Depression. After Robert Buchanan passed away in 1930, McDermott struggled to keep the Buick dealership afloat. The shop closed, but McDermott refused to sell the building, instead choosing to lease it to Waco’s National Guard unit.

Prior to the 1930s, the National Guard made use of the grounds of Waco’s famous Cotton Palace for their training and storage facility. Yet the demise of the cotton industry concurrent with the Depression led to the closure of the Cotton Palace. The vacant McDermott building—with its spacious, sturdy structure which lent itself to vehicle maintenance and storage—proved to be an ideal replacement. After the lease began in 1931, the National Guard temporarily renamed the structure Fort Fiske Wright, to honor a revered local officer who died heroically in World War I. In addition to its utilitarian purposes, Fort Fiske Wright served as a sort of civic center where veterans gathered to smoke and play dominoes and their sons brought dates to dances.

The advent of the Second World War led to the building transitioning from military use to wartime aviation production. Few National Guardsmen remained in Waco, and in 1941, Fort Fiske Wright closed. In 1943, McDermott leased the property to North American Aviation, one of the US military’s main suppliers of aircraft. The company painted over the windows and the army supervised the assembly site, but despite these efforts at secrecy, Wacoans discussed the airplane wings which were constructed there and shipped elsewhere for assembly. 

At the conclusion of World War II, the McDermott Motors building served once again as an automobile dealership for a short time when leased to D. T. Hicks, before entering a period of twenty years of disuse. Although McDermott received several offers from prospective buyers, he refused to sell the property until 1978. For a short time, a Christian bookstore resided in the historic building, and beginning in 1988, the charitable organization Caritas ran its operations there. Yet after a furnace fire resulted in enormously high repair costs, the building once again sat vacant.

The turn of the century brought about new uses for the McDermott Motors building. Texas physician Len Dippel purchased it in 2001, completing some renovations on the building as well as an application to list the building on the National Register of Historic Places. However, his plans to adapt the building into loft-style apartments were never realized, and in 2014, local entrepreneurs Joel and Josh Peel, owners of Hole in the Roof Marketing and Sticker Universe, respectively, bought the property. The brothers plan to complete renovations on the historic building and move their growing businesses into the unique and spacious structure.

This recent revival and repurposing of the McDermott Motors building ensures that the building will continue its legacy of adapting to meet the needs of the city.

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During its decade of service, George Barnard’s branch of the Torrey Trading Posts served as one of the first commercial ventures in the Waco area. Transactions between white settlers and native Indians conducted at Torrey Trading Posts served as a vital part of Sam Houston’s peace policy in the mid-nineteenth century. Brothers John, David, and Thomas Torrey opened the first Torrey Trading Houses establishment in Houston in 1838. Over the next decade, the firm established trading houses in Austin, San Antonio, New Braunfels, and along the Brazos River.

In 1844, the firm opened a trading post on a small tributary of Tehuacana Creek, about eight miles below Waco Indian Village. George Barnard, a twenty-six-year-old native of Connecticut, was the proprietor of this post. After serving as a clerk for the Torrey firm in Houston for several years, Barnard became a partner in 1843. George and his brother Charles moved to Tehuacana Creek in 1844 to operate the new post, becoming the first white settlers in the Waco region.

Located on a high hill overlooking the Brazos Valley, the post was well-known by the Indians of the region since the site had served as a council ground for several years. Game was abundant in this area, and the trading post developed a large fur trade. Between 1844 and 1853, Barnard handled seventy-five thousand deer hides. Buffalo hides were also plentiful. Black bears were likewise abundant, and there were even numerous beavers in this community, though of a smaller variety than the northern beaver and with poorer fur. Here, workers sorted hides, packed them into bales, and freighted them to Houston by ox wagon. Barnard's principal freighter, L. H. Williams, charged two dollars per hundred pounds of fur.

Barnard's stock of trade goods consisted of almost anything the post’s Indian customers might desire, including heavy supplies of gunpowder, lead, bullet molds, and hatchets, as well as colored beads, blankets, cloth, dress combs, and refined bear's oil. Tobacco was in heavy demand, and Barnard's sales record also showed the occasional sale of a gallon of whiskey. In 1848, Barnard bought out the Torrey brothers' interest in the post for $9,500, which was about one half of the inventory valuation of the stock.

George B. Erath and Jacob De Cordova began to lay out the first plots of Waco Village in 1849. As the Indians began to move further away from growing white settlements, George and Charles relocated the trading post to the Brazos River in order to remain close to their primary base of customers. The removal of the Indians from the Waco area dealt a blow to business at Barnard’s Trading Post, and it is likely that the depot was controversial among white settlers due to its provision of arms and liquor to the Indians.

By 1851, Barnard bought a lot in Waco Village and moved his stock from the Tehuacana River. He sold the business to Fox and Jacobs, Waco’s first Jewish merchants, in 1857. The buildings of the original trading post stood for many years afterwards, the last being destroyed by a fire in 1929. The original location of this celebrated frontier establishment, which served as a point of peaceful interaction between white settlers and native Wacoans, was marked with a historical marker by the Texas Centennial Commission in 1936.

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Though L. L. Sams and Sons became one of the nation’s largest and most popular church furniture suppliers in the twentieth century, it developed from humble beginnings. Rev. L. L. Sams, a traveling Baptist preacher, desired to build a church for his congregation in Whitney, Texas, in 1898. He became frustrated after meeting with local carpenters to discuss the costs of constructing pews for the new building. Unhappy with the options they presented, and suspecting the local carpenters were in cahoots to take advantage of him through their prices, he decided to look elsewhere for furniture.

Though the Michigan-based company E. H. Stafford did not have Texas representatives, they sent Sams a catalog of their furniture. After Sams ordered furniture for his new church and for several other pastors in the area, the firm signed him on as their first Texas sales representative. Sams visited other pastors two Sundays of each month and turned great profits for Stafford. In turn, he received a commission enabling him to send all four of his children to Baylor University. The family moved to Waco in 1918 to be closer to Baylor and set up an official sales office for the company on South Fifth Street.

Sams’ sons Ross and Rowe both joined the furniture business following their graduation from nearby Baylor. The company adopted the name L. L. Sams and Sons, and the brothers set to work expanding the enterprise established by their father. For instance, Ross designed a set of pew samples which could be disassembled and placed in a railroad trunk. He then traveled throughout the state pitching their products to his former Baylor classmates, now pastors.

L. L. Sams retired and sold the business to his two sons in 1927. The hard economic times of the Great Depression slowed business considerably. In 1938, the two brothers introduced a new aspect to the company in order to attract more customers: furniture delivery and installation. This addition, combined with the boom of church construction in the United States following the conclusion of World War II, greatly expanded the company’s customer base.

In order to meet the needs of the now booming business, Ross employed a Waco cabinetmaker in 1946 to construct some of the pulpits which the company sold. Recognizing the value of the company producing its own furniture, L. L. Sams and Sons bought out the cabinet business and purchased an abandoned textile mill, establishing Sams Manufacturing Company.

To avoid another downturn in sales after the boom in church building ended in the mid-1950s, L. L. Sams and Company expanded its services into church renovation. The company also began to design and install stained glass in 1960. In the next few decades, the business continued to adapt its products in order to meet customer needs, changing atmospheres, and new trends. By 1989, the company branched out to offer its services to commercial as well as religious institutions.

In 1994, Ross Sams Jr. merged L. L. Sams and Sons with Royal Seating Corporation, and in 1997 the business moved approximately 50 miles south to Cameron, Texas. The development company T. D. Watson Interests bought the factory that year and converted it into loft-style apartments intended to preserve the history of the factory through “adaptive reuse.”

L. L. Sams’s dedication to the provision of quality furniture and good customer service developed into a thriving family business. The Waco-based company operated for nearly a century, providing authentic worship environments for churches nationwide.

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Built when fewer than seven hundred citizens lived in Waco Village proper, the Earle-Napier-Kinnard House has truly been a witness to history.

In 1856, Thomas Harrison and John Baylis Earle purchased a double log cabin on five acres for $1,000. Two years later, Earle built a two-room brick home on three of the acres and moved into the residence with his wife Emma. The couple had their first three children in the home but eventually relocated to East Waco in order to be closer to the factory Earle established to manufacture uniforms for Confederate soldiers. In 1866, H. S. Morgan purchased the property for $4,000 in gold specie and started work on a two-story addition to the original building. By May of 1868, the house had new owners in Dr. John Smith Napier and his wife Mary, who acquired the property for $5,000. The Napiers took on the expansion project and enlarged the house to its present form. Unfortunately, Mary Napier did not get to enjoy the home for long as she passed away in April of 1872. Dr. Napier lived in the home until his death in 1889. Prior to her father’s death, Sallie Napier, one of the seven Napier children, took up residence in the family home with her husband Rev. David Cannon Kinnard. The Kinnards frequently entertained visiting preachers, leading the residence to be nicknamed “the House of Pastors” among their contemporaries. Mary, the eldest Kinnard daughter, moved into the house when she was five years old and lived there until her death at age ninety-four in 1957.

The house is built in the Greek Revival style, as evidenced by its white, pillared porticos. Its exterior is comprised of pale pink handmade brick from a local kiln. The porch has an ornamental wooden banister, which resembles ironwork, on both the upper and lower galleries. The windows are nicely adorned with cypress shutters.

In January of 1958, Frances Duncan Nalle purchased the house. Nalle initially oversaw the refurbishment of the residence. The restoration included enclosing the latticed back porch and adding two bathrooms over that porch on the second floor. Although the above efforts enabled the house to return to its former state, much of the property’s original acreage was lost to the construction of Interstate Highway 35. However, the above did not diminish the historic value of the house nor its appeal to the broader community. For a time the home served as a clubhouse for Baylor faculty social gatherings. A newlywed Baylor undergraduate couple, Kathleen and Herman Massey, lived there with full period furniture as onsite curators in the 1960s. Then in 1967, Nalle endowed the house and presented it, with all its antique furnishings, to the Waco Perpetual Growth Foundation.

On March 11, 1971, the National Register of Historic Places added the Earle-Napier-Kinnard House to its list of properties. It had the honor of being the third structure from Waco to be included, preceded only by the Suspension Bridge and Fort House.

The Earle-Napier-Kinnard House is now a public museum run by Historic Waco Foundation, placing it in the unique position of being a testament to Waco’s past while remaining a witness to the city’s future development.

For tours of the Earle-Napier-Kinnard House, or for more information about Historic Waco Foundation, visit www.historicwaco.org.

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The history of Fort House is as much a narrative about a nineteenth-century family home as it is local twentieth century efforts to preserve the landmarks of Waco’s prosperous past.

The man behind one of Waco’s more distinctive homes was not a Texas native. Originally from La Grange, Alabama, William A. Fort came to Waco in 1854 with a caravan of five hundred people. He and his father established a plantation four miles south of Waco in the Downsville area. On May 7, 1856, he married Dionita Elizabeth Wilson. After the Civil War, Fort decided the area south of Waco was too devastated, so he purchased six acres of land at South Fourth Street and Webster Avenue from his wife for $1,300. In 1868, he built Fort House and moved his family to the city. Fort rose to prominence within Waco as the acting president of Waco National Bank, and the owner of the city’s first transit system.

Fort designed the house according to the Greek Revival style. It is constructed of locally made pink brick possibly sourced from the Trice brick kiln in East Waco. On either side of the front door are cypress wood, fluted ionic columns. The columns were made in New Orleans, shipped to Galveston, and then transported to Waco overland by ox cart and flat-bottom boat. The house also features cypress shutters and pine trim. The balcony above the front door originally extended to the columns.

The earliest floor plan consisted of a central hall with a bedroom on the left; staircase, parlor, and dining room on the right. The upper floor repeated the arrangement below with bedrooms to the right and left of a central hallway. At first the home featured a detached kitchen in order to minimize the danger of fire and to prevent kitchen heat, odor, and noise from entering the house. Around 1876, Fort elongated the ell, or perpendicular wing of the house, by adding two bedrooms on the upper floor and a kitchen and three-walled area on the first floor. This area was left open for wagons to pull in and unload provisions directly to the house.

The original plot of land on which Fort House stands extended from South Fourth Street and Webster Avenue to encompass six or more acres. The western boundary was Fifth Street. A white picket fence enclosed the property until the Fort family replaced it with a fancier wrought- iron fence sometime prior to 1890. This enclosure was necessary as the Fort family kept horses, cows, and poultry and maintained extensive vegetable gardens and orchards. Fort House underwent significant changes in the early twentieth century. From 1911 to 1955, the house ceased to be the residence of its namesake family and was rented out to various tenants. The property fell into decline until the Junior League of Waco purchased it in 1956. The Junior League commissioned architects Bob Bennett of Waco and Raiford Stripling of San Augustine, authorities on early Texas restorations, with the task of returning the home to its former state. Initially, the organization intended to use the refurbished home as a headquarters and tearoom. However, recognizing the property’s historic value, the Junior League deeded the house to the Waco Society for Historic Preservation (later Historic Waco Foundation). In 1970, Congressman W. R. Poage announced Fort House had been selected for the National Register of Historic Places. The residence served as a public museum until 2019. In March 2019, Chip and Joanna Gaines purchased the home to be added to their Magnolia Market properties. Although it is no longer open for viewing, Fort House stands preserved as a physical reminder of the legacy of the Fort family and the value Wacoans place on history.

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On the east bank of the Brazos River stands East Terrace House, a residence with a past that is as remarkable as its Italianate style of architecture.

Future industrialist John Wesley Mann moved to Waco in 1858 from Lebanon, Tennessee. He raised horses until he enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861 as a private in Company G, Sixth Regiment, Texas Cavalry. Mann served as a blacksmith and as a member of a scout company throughout the duration of the war. Having survived the war, Mann looked to settle down. He married Cemira Howard Twaddle Mann in 1868. Mann purchased property on the east bank of the Brazos River. In 1874, J. W. Mann, his wife, and first son, Howard moved into the completed East Terrace House.

  The residence is an example of Italianate architecture, a style seen but rarely in the South. East Terrace offers a visual feast of the Italianate with its vertical proportions, tall hooded windows, horizontal roofline, and bracketed cornices. Its square Mansard-roofed cupola is particularly striking. The cupola boasts a tower room with excellent views of the estate’s acreage and the Brazos River.

Mann designed his family residence to be well suited to matters of business and pleasure. A successful industrialist, Mann conducted much of his commercial dealings from the comfort of his home office due to its relative proximity to his brick kilns, sand barges on the Brazos, and other ventures. In order to better entertain clients and leading members of Wacoan society, Mann added a dining room and large bedroom to East Terrace in 1880. The family furnished the bedroom with six small beds to accommodate overnight guests. By 1884, Mann approved a second addition to the house, an entertainment wing complete with its own entrance hall and ballroom. Parties in the East Terrace ballroom were a grand event. The Manns would host frequent summer balls that attracted so many society figures that extra stable boys had to be hired to take care of the numerous carriages and horses.

No less impressive were the original grounds of East Terrace. Resplendent with rose gardens, strutting peacocks, an orchard, columbine-draped terraces, and a sunken garden with a goldfish pond, the Mann family’s estate was a small Eden along the Brazos. However, East Terrace’s proximity to the river meant that it was also susceptible to flood waters. Several times the grounds were overtaken by the swollen banks of the river, and at least once the waters rose as high as four feet in the residence’s ground floor.

 The early part of the twentieth century witnessed a decline in fortune for the estate. While Howard Mann retained possession of the house, it ceased to be a grand family residence. From 1930 to 1939, Mann leased East Terrace to Charles Lemly who converted it into the Lemly Chiropractic Psychopathic Sanatorium. After Lemly, Mann rented the house to different tenants but under the stipulation that he be allowed to keep a room there. When Mann passed away in 1948, East Terrace stood vacant except for the occasional presence of vagrants.

Thankfully, East Terrace was not to be left to the ravages of time. Young Brothers Contractors purchased the estate in the 1950s to use the site for equipment storage. Recognizing the historic value of the property, Young Brothers deeded East Terrace to the Heritage Society in 1960. Financial gifts from the Cooper Foundation, Eleanor Pape, Lucille Massey, and others enabled two restoration projects to be carried out in 1960 and 1966, respectively. In 1967 East Terrace received the Texas Restoration Award.

East Terrace House is now an historic house museum run by Historic Waco Foundation.

For tours of East Terrace House, or for more information about Historic Waco Foundation, visit www.historicwaco.org.

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McCulloch House is a historic house museum owned by Historic Waco Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to maintain and preserve the history of Waco. This organization owns three historic house museums in Waco in addition to the McCulloch House: Earle-Napier-Kinnard House, Fort House, and East Terrace House.

Josiah Caldwell, a Waco physician, built what would become McCulloch House for his wife, Maria Caldwell, and their five children in 1866. Originally, the structure was a two-bedroom house with a detached kitchen. 

In 1871, local merchant Champe Carter McCulloch and wife Emma bought the house and began renovations. They worked on the house for eleven years, first building another wing, and eventually expanding the house into a two-story building. The Greek Revival addition was completed in 1872. In enlarging the house, the workers made use of local pink brick.

Mr. McCulloch was a prominent Wacoan, a local merchant who made frequent trips to New York to buy merchandise for local vendors. He also served as mayor of the city for eleven years. The McCullochs raised seven children in the house, but also ensured that the house remained part of the Waco social scene, hosting many dances and parties. It became a part of a series of houses throughout Central Texas that allowed people to travel and experience different cities such as Dallas and Houston. People went on “pilgrimages” to these different houses in order to participate in the dances and parties, getting an idea of what life in those cities might be like. McCulloch House made a significant impact on the city of Waco through the effect these pilgrimages had upon the city’s social life and population.

The 1953 tornado destroyed a large portion of McCulloch House which later had to be completely reconstructed. Some of this damage can still be seen today, such as the portion of stairs that remains slanted. Members of the McCulloch family continued to live in the house until 1971, at which point the heirs donated it to Historic Waco Foundation. McCulloch House has a lively history that is continuously being enhanced by the people who maintain it.

For tours of the McCulloch House, or for more information about Historic Waco Foundation, visit www.historicwaco.org.

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The Washington Avenue Bridge is a steel, Pennsylvania through truss bridge that spans the Brazos River and connects East Waco to downtown. Before the construction of the Washington Avenue Bridge, the Waco Suspension Bridge, built in 1870, offered the only reliable way for individuals to cross the river. However, by 1900 Waco was a booming city, and another bridge was necessary to lighten the load on the thirty-year old structure. 

Construction on the Washington Avenue Bridge began in 1901 and was completed in 1902, with John Wharton Maxey of Houston as the lead architect, and John H. Sparks from St. Joseph, Missouri, as the contracting engineer. Once the bridge was completed in July of 1902, it was tested by sending five vehicles from the city fire department, including engines, hose carts, and wagons, across at varying speeds. At one point they went as fast as if they were traveling to an actual fire. The bridge passed this test and was opened soon after that. At the time, the Washington Avenue Bridge was the sixteenth longest bridge of its type in the United States and the longest Pennsylvania through truss in Texas and the rest of the Southwest.

The bridge was first repaired in 2004 to fix cracks that were found in some of the tension rods. It then underwent a renovation that lasted from 2009 to 2010. During this renovation other cracked parts were repaired and missing pieces were replaced with similar materials. In addition, the bridge was painted black, which a paint analysis had revealed to be its original color. The restoration work replaced less than 5 percent of the original material, and in 2011, the Texas Department of Transportation received an award for Excellence in Restoration of a Structure from the Historic Landmark Preservation Commission of Waco. Today, the Washington Avenue Bridge is still traveled by vehicles and pedestrians, which makes it the oldest and longest Pennsylvania through truss still in use in the United States.

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For over a century, the Hippodrome Theatre has stood as a downtown home for ever-changing forms of entertainment.

The venue emerged in the early twentieth century through advocates for a downtown theater banding together. A group of local businessmen, organized by Thomas Finnegan, hired architects to design a structure dedicated to live performances and cinema. In 1913, ground broke on what became an iconic piece of the city’s architecture, designed by Waco’s own Roy E. Lane and Dallas architects Otto Land and Frank Witchell. On February 7, 1914, Wacoans gathered at 724 Austin Avenue and paid ten cents a ticket to view the grand opening of the Hippodrome Theatre, featuring a live seal act, magic show, and five-piece orchestra.

For many years, the Hippodrome served as a hub of downtown entertainment. Locals came to know the theater managed by J. P. Harrison and well-known theater entrepreneur Earl Henry Hulsey as “Hulsey’s Hipp.” Vaudeville troupes and silent films filled the theater’s early bills. As the popularity of moving pictures steadily grew, the Hippodrome—an affiliate of Paramount Pictures—steadily began to replace live acts with silent films.

A production booth fire in 1928 destroyed much of the forward portion of the building and brought about serious changes. Louis Dent of Southern Enterprises reopened the theater in 1929 with a new name and a new face. A redesigned Spanish Colonial Revival-style façade and cool air-conditioned air greeted moviegoers at the Waco Theatre. A few years later, new equipment allowed the theater to catch up with local rivals, such as the Orpheum Theatre on Sixth Street, which were already playing talkies. In 1931, the Waco Theatre played its first movie with sound.

The Waco Theatre continued the Hippodrome’s tradition, serving as a prominent figure in the Texas entertainment industry. Visitors from small Texas towns filled downtown Waco on the weekends and caught a show at the Hippodrome in the evening. Big-name performers drew large crowds to the movie theater. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Fanny Brice each stopped at the theater in the 1930s, and Elvis Presley once caught a show at the Waco Theatre during his time stationed at Fort Hood.

In 1936, new construction added a second story to the grand theater, and two more renovations followed in the 1950s and early 1970s. However, more challenges loomed ahead. By the mid-twentieth century, attention had shifted to suburban areas, and many businesses headed out of the city. Although the theater survived the 1953 tornado unscathed, much of downtown did not. The Twenty Fifth Street Theater began to draw away the downtown audience, and the construction of Twin Cinema in the 1960s brought more customers to the suburbs. The last movie played at the Waco Theatre on December 15, 1974. The building sat vacant for over six years.

The Junior League, the Cooper Foundation, and local volunteers banded together in the 1980s to undertake a restoration project, leading to the reopening of the Waco Hippodrome Theatre on February 28, 1987. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operated by the Waco Performing Arts Company, the historic theater began to draw visitors back to Austin Avenue once again with live performances. However, the success was short-lived. The steady popularity of suburban theaters kept attendance low, and maintenance for the historic structure proved too costly for fundraisers to maintain. The theater closed again in 2010.

Local developers Shane and Cody Turner purchased the property in 2012 with a vision for adapting the structure. While retaining the building’s historic look, the brothers added a wall to the second story to allow two films to be shown at once and renovated the second floor lobby into a bar. A modern addition on the Eighth Street side of the theater features a restaurant and concession stand. The Hippodrome reopened in November of 2014.

In 2020, parts of the theatre were once again closed for renovations. Now used primarily as a concert hall and adaptive event space, the Hippodrome continues to bring people together and is a centerpiece of Waco’s entertainment scene.

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Few major products are as closely identified with the people and environment where they began as Dr Pepper in Waco. Developing from a soft drink invented at a local drugstore to one of the largest and most popular industries in the world, Dr Pepper has remained attached to the city of Waco. This close identification with Waco is perhaps best exemplified in the former bottling plant building which now houses a museum on the corner of Fifth Street and Mary Avenue in downtown Waco.

In 1885, one year before the invention of Coca-Cola, a young pharmacist named Charles Alderton began experimenting by mixing different fruit flavors together at The Old Corner Drug Store on Fourth Street and Austin Avenue. The resulting concoction would become the formula for Dr Pepper. The drink became a favorite of fountain patrons, and soon people all across town ordered the drink originally known as a Waco. From around 1885 to 1891, the drink, could only be served at fountains or the drugstore, where the syrup was mixed with the carbonated water and served individually. The popularity of the beverage influenced the drugstore owner and manager, Wade Morrison and Robert S. Lazenby to form the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Co. in 1891 to bottle the drink.

In 1906, a three-story building was built at the corner of Fifth and Mary for the purpose of bottling and shipping the new drink. In 1922, the base of operations moved to Dallas after the formation of the formal Dr Pepper Company. Local bottling production continued until around 1965, when operations were moved to a more modern facility. The building was given to Baylor University and subsequently used as a storage warehouse for the next thirteen years.

On May 11, 1953, an F5 tornado struck downtown Waco, devastating the city. Although it did not sustain a direct hit, the bottling building was among the casualties of the tornado. The tornado damaged the Mary Street side of the building leaving a scar which is still visible today. The relatively sound construction of the bottling building, including 18-inch thick brick walls, massive timber underpinnings, and tile roof, is the reason for the fairly minor damage to the plant. The building was repaired with a lighter colored brick but not restored, and business was back to as usual until the move in 1965.

At Waco’s centennial celebration of the invention of Dr Pepper in 1985, ideas of creating a museum to tell the story of Dr Pepper production in Waco sprang up. On May 11, 1991, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the tornado, the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute opened. Since then, the museum has entertained and educated thousands of visitors, with a mission of being the best museum to tell the story of the soft drink industry and to use this very industry as a testament to the free enterprise system. Complete with exhibit areas, a gift shop, soda fountain, and restored building features, the Dr Pepper Museum helps tell the story of the growth of Dr Pepper and its special place in Waco.

For more information about the museum, visit www.drpeppermuseum.com.  

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Old Waco High School is the oldest of several extant buildings to have housed Waco High School. Initially the school met in two small buildings in downtown Waco during the 1880s, and for many years was the only public school west of the Brazos. The high school was built in 1910, and sits in downtown Waco on Columbus Avenue in close proximity to the courthouse and the ALICO building.

The school quickly became notable in the community. In 1915, all 110 seniors passed their classes and graduated. At their graduation ceremony, the keynote speaker invited them to draw upon the efficiency, industry, and preparedness they had been taught at Waco High, for these “were the qualities by which they would eventually triumph” in life. The athletic program was also successful early on. In 1922, the Waco High Tigers defeated the Abilene Eagles, becoming the Texas State Football Champions.

The racial makeup of Waco High began to change in the 1960s when the Waco Independent School District began implementing racial integration. Prior to integration, African American students attended Jefferson Moore High School. The school board mandated incremental integration beginning with teachers and then students, but only achieved the minimum requirements to meet federal standards.

In 1971, a new structure was built to house Waco High School on North Nineteenth Street. Citizens of Waco offered many suggestions for ways to repurpose Old Waco High. For instance, many wanted the building to be used for special education and neighborhood recreation programs. Some thought it best to simply sell it to the highest bidder. Over the next twenty years, Old Waco High was used to house an alternative school, a special education department, a museum called the Metropolitan Learning Center, and a pregnancy resource center. In 1990, the building was closed to the public and sat empty.

The school board put the building up for sale in 1995. However, the cost of removing asbestos and lead-based paint from the building, nearly ten million dollars, led to buyer after buyer losing interest over the next decade. In 2004, dismayed citizens who did not want to see the historic building destroyed attempted to raise the necessary funds to renovate the building but were unable to find a lead donor to assist in the process.

In 2006, a private developer came along with a proposal to renovate Old Waco High. Rehab Builders proposed to develop the building into loft-style apartments which would be offered to low-income families. In 2008, the sale of Old Waco High was completed after the developer agreed to preserve the historic integrity of the building. Today, each unit of the Historic Lofts of Waco High is different depending on where it exists in the floor plan. For instance, some units contain chalkboards; others might have a basketball goal or game clock.

Old Waco High became deeply woven into city fabric through its dedication to the education of youth in Waco. The school educated generation after generation of Wacoans, creating a legacy that many fought to preserve after the school’s closure. Today, Old Waco High remains an important part of the community through its provision of quality housing to low-income citizens.  

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In the years leading up to 1870, the Brazos River proved to be both a blessing and a curse to the city of Waco. During that time, no bridges spanned the eight hundred miles of river flowing through Central Texas, forcing cattle drivers moving up the Chisholm Trail to find shallow fording areas. Waco's shallow banks provided one of these opportune locations, and the Chisholm Trail brought a great deal of trade to the small city. Yet the river also posed a serious transportation issue for merchants and travelers. Although Waco pioneer Shapely Prince Ross ran a ferry for those wishing to cross, the river became impassable for days or even weeks during flood season. It became clear that a better means of crossing the river was necessary, both for locals and those passing through. The close of the Civil War, however, left the city of Waco and McLennan County without funds for such a project. Plans to build a bridge across the Brazos initiated in 1866, when the Texas State Legislature granted a charter for the foundation of a private company, the Waco Bridge Company. The charter provided the Waco Bridge Company a monopoly on transportation across the river for the next twenty-five years, allowing no other bridges to be built within five miles of their bridge. A budget of twenty-five thousand dollars was set for the construction of the bridge, and after much deliberation, the shareholders chose the steel cable suspension bridge design due to its cheapness and ease of transport. 

John T. Flint, president of the Waco Bridge Company, hired Thomas M. Griffith, a civil engineer from New York, for the project. Griffith was an accomplished enginner who, early in his career in 1854, built the first bridge spanning the Mississippi River in frontier Minnesota. Griffith arrived in Waco in October 1868 to begin preliminary plans for the bridge. The Roebling Company of Trenton, NJ, was commissioned to provide cables and bridgework. This is the same firm that would later provide materials for the Brooklyn Bridge. After the parts arrived in Waco by oxcart, local labor began to assemble the suspension bridge. The bridge was officially completed and opened to through traffic in 1870. At the time, it was the longest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi River.

The economic benefits of the bridge immediately became visible to the city and surrounding area. In the following decades, Waco became the capital for cotton and cattle in Central Texas, rivaling Dallas in size by the 1900s. Built just at the edge of the business section of the city at First Street and Main Street, the Suspension Bridge stimulated the growth of Waco by providing a steady stream of traffic through the city. The bridge itself also supplied economic revenue. The 1866 charter allowed the Waco Bridge Company to charge a toll as long as the company properly maintained the bridge. The bridge collected enough in tolls in the first year of operation to completely pay off its mortgage. The toll quickly became unpopular, and many began searching for ways to circumvent it. Ultimately, McLennan County bought the Suspension Bridge from the Waco Bridge Company for a sum of $75,000. It was then sold to the city of Waco for one dollar, with the provision that the city would maintain the bridge and eliminate the toll. Many citizens called for the “unsightly bridge” to be removed in 1913. Rather than tear down the historic bridge, the city re-floored it, stuccoed over the red bricks, and replaced its wooden trusses with steel. Over the next century, the bridge underwent renovations several more times and continued to serve vehicular traffic until 1971. By that time, other options for crossing the Brazos River existed, such as the Washington Avenue Bridge and the Herring Avenue Bridge.  Today, the bridge serves only pedestrian traffic. It is the centerpiece of Indian Springs Park on the river, and stands as a reminder of Waco’s rich history.

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Built in 1901, the McLennan County Courthouse holds pride of place within Waco as not only a functioning center of justice but also the city’s most impressive civic building.

Designed by James Riley Gordon, the renowned architect responsible for the Ellis County Courthouse in Waxahachie and the Arizona State Capital building, the McLennan County Courthouse has a neoclassical exterior. The courthouse’s pilasters and columns are Corinthian. The courthouse features three justice-themed statues. On top of the central dome stands Themis, the Greek goddess of divine order. In her right hand, Themis holds a double-edged sword that represents the law as the chief instrument of justice. Her left hand holds aloft a pair of scales intended to symbolize the weighing of facts in the balance by the courts. The other two statues are located on the upper roof below the dome. One is Justitia, the Roman goddess of justice, and the other appears to be a classical version of Lady Liberty.

The interior of the courthouse is also ornate. The Tenth Court of Civil Appeals features columns made of Kenesaw marble. Stained-glass art pieces with brilliant blue hues and star designs grace the inside ceiling of the dome.

In addition to its courtrooms, the structure is also the seat of the McLennan County government. As a result, the building is charged with the task of storing the legal records of the entire county. At first there was more than enough room to house paper copies of the records. However, as the population of McLennan County increased in the mid-twentieth century, the existing office space and cabinetry proved insufficient. To create more space, McLennan County renovated much of the courthouse’s interior.

Many notable legal cases have taken place in the courthouse. Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, stood trial there in 1930 for numerous criminal charges including burglary and theft. Judge Richard I. Munroe sentenced Barrow to a two-year prison sentence for the above offenses, but Barrow broke out of the McLennan County Jail before he could be transferred to the state jail at Huntsville. Furthermore, the first live televised murder trial took place in the building in December of 1955, when Judge D. W. Bartlett allowed local station KWTX-TV to film the proceedings of the Harry L. Washburn trial in the 54th State District Court.

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