In the mid-twentieth century, Waco underwent major changes through the federally funded Urban Renewal Agency of Waco. Areas impacted included numerous city blocks between LaSalle Avenue and Waco Drive. The project greatly affected the city’s people, businesses, schools, and buildings, including Waco’s most prominent landmark, the ALICO building.
Between 1964 and 1966, the ALICO (American Life Insurance Company) building received major updates. The largest and most significant addition to the structure was the ALICO Inn and its convention facilities. The 22-story ALICO building, originally known as the Amicable building, was completed in 1911, and designed by architects Roy E. Lane and Sanguinet & Staats. It stood as the tallest office building in the southwestern United States at its completion. Once located in the central business district, it served as a vital part of the city’s economy. In order to remain that way, it needed to keep pace with the rapidly changing business climate of Waco in the 1950s and ’60s.
With the closing of the Roosevelt Hotel and its conversion into a retirement facility, more downtown hotels were needed, and the Waco Chamber of Commerce was receptive to ideas such as the creation of the ALICO Center. The city wanted to attract conventions and shoppers to the downtown area. Twenty-nine-year-old architect and owner of Down-Tel Corporation, Jay Frank Powell, initiated the center’s proposal. According to an article in the September 20, 1964, Waco Tribune-Herald, the Waco Chamber, when presented with the ALICO Center plan: “pounced on Powell like a piece of beef dangled before a starving lion.”
When completed in 1966, the ALICO Center Inn contained 115 rooms for overnight guests and a second-floor meeting room that sat 250 in a banquet or 1,000 to 1,200 people auditorium-style. It was described as a “downtown motor hotel with convention facilities, a motor bank, and a five-story parking garage.” The ALICO Center was designed to match its changing surroundings, including part of Austin Avenue’s closure to make it into a pedestrian mall, another part of the Waco Urban Renewal Agency’s planning.
At the 1964 ALICO Center groundbreaking ceremony, the president of Amicable Life Insurance Company, Franklin Smith, stated, “It will be not only a step toward completion of ALICO Center, but mark the beginning of a new atmosphere and a new enthusiasm in downtown Waco.” Additionally, Waco’s mayor Roger Conger compared the event to “the historic groundbreaking for the Amicable building more than fifty years ago.”
The end result, completed in 1966, changed the design of the original 1911 ALICO building, with the new hotel, convention center, parking garage, and motor bank joined directly to it. As a result, the ALICO Center’s additions took up nearly the entire 400 block of Austin Avenue—stretching much of the complex back to Washington Avenue. The entire redesign of the 1966 ALICO Center seemed well balanced in appearance—and represented the mid-century modern architectural style frequently seen during the period.
However, the ALICO Center as it appeared in 1966 is no longer. Like many other downtown businesses, the center struggled as many retailers moved out to the suburbs. The hotel and convention center were demolished in the late nineties, and the space is now used as a parking lot. The main vintage 1911 building and parking garage complex remain and retain most of the later modifications, including much of the 1966 addition’s façade at street level, wrapping around Austin Avenue, the parking garage along Fifth Street, and back to the Washington Avenue side of the complex.
The ALICO building has stood for over a century, remaining a successful combination of old and “new.” Most importantly, it continues to serve as Waco’s most prominent downtown landmark.
]]>Fort Fisher is an excellent example of how a historical site can be reimagined to fit contemporary needs. Comprised of a few shanties in the mid nineteenth century, more than 130 years later the Waco Chamber of Commerce breathed new life into the fading historical memory of Fort Fisher by transforming the site into an attractive tourist destination on Interstate 35.
In 1837, Colonel William S. Fisher, secretary of war for the Republic of Texas, ordered a company of thirty-eight Texas Rangers to build a small fort near the site of a deserted Waco Indian Village. Hastily constructed, the encampment did not resemble a fort so much as a humble grouping of temporary shelters. After a few weeks, Colonel Fisher deemed the site to be too remote for sustained use and commanded the Rangers to abandon it. In perhaps mock tribute to the man behind the short-lived endeavor, the Rangers christened the vacated post Fort Fisher. It remained a mere footnote in Waco’s history for more than a century.
The arrival of Interstate 35 in the early 1960s led to the repurposing of the memory of Fort Fisher to help develop tourism as well as a functioning center of law and order. Hoping to entice passing motorists to stop in Waco, the Waco Chamber of Commerce’s Publicity Committee considered a myriad of proposals for a roadside attraction. In 1963, Waco businessman and gifted salesman James R. LeBlond put forward the idea of a revived Fort Fisher. Located roughly within the vicinity of the original camp at the west end of the Interstate 35 bridge across the Brazos, the “new” Fort Fisher would be a multipurpose facility with space allotted for a tourist information center, the headquarters of Texas Rangers Company F, and a small museum to display Ranger memorabilia. Intrigued by LeBlond’s pitch, the Waco Chamber of Commerce approved the formation of a special Fort Fisher Committee. Along with LeBlond, notable members of the committee included Texas Ranger Captain Clint Peoples, historian and former mayor of Waco Roger N. Conger, and publisher Robert E. Davis. The committee faced a distinct challenge in that it had to obtain not only municipal approval for the project but permission from Colonel Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, to relocate Texas Rangers Company F to the site. Fortunately for the committee, Colonel Garrison consented to the project. In 1967 the Waco City Council approved the construction of the 1 ½ acre Fort Fisher complex on a budget of $125,000. It would be situated within a larger thirty-five acre Fort Fisher Park managed by Waco’s Parks and Recreation Department.
Fort Fisher’s October 25, 1968 dedication ceremony drew not only interested locals but numerous active duty and retired Texas Rangers. Dignitaries such as Chief United States Marshal James McShane and the director of the Department of Public Safety, W. E. (Pat) Speir, were in attendance. Perhaps most exciting to the crowd was the presence of popular Gunsmoke actor James Arness who lent a little Hollywood star power to the occasion.
While the revived Fort Fisher bore its predecessor’s name, it was a far cry from the hurriedly assembled quarters of the original inhabitants. Architect David Carnahan designed Fort Fisher’s buildings to resemble authentic log cabins from the early 1880s. Some of the period detail on Fort Fisher’s two buildings included large stone fireplaces, covered front porches, and wooden shutters with bars or straps covering the windows. The Homer Garrison Jr. museum gallery helped reinforce this period feel as it exhibited an extensive collection of early Ranger armaments and uniforms. The buildings of Fort Fisher still stand but the site is now known as the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum.
With Fort Fisher's revival and repurposing as a tourist destination and law enforcement center, Waco made a civic statement to visitors and denizens alike, that the city was not only an appealing stop alongside the interstate but an urban center in which law and order were respected in the tumultuous late 1960s.
Though designed to appeal to visitors, the construction of Fort Fisher also caused a local impact that extended beyond tourism and statements about law and order. When Waco decided to erect Fort Fisher, it did so on land associated with First Street Cemetery. The cemetery—the oldest in the city—suffered from poor record keeping and constant neglect; making it ideal for development. Building Fort Fisher meant relocating some of the cemetery’s headstones and remains. However, expansion of Fort Fisher in 2007 unearthed remains and showed only the transfer of headstones occurred in the 1960s. The revelation sparked scholarly and community endeavors over the next decade. Fort Fisher’s connection to the land on which it was developed may prove as instructive to tourists and Wacoans as what they find in its museum.
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