General Tire & Rubber Company came to Waco in late 1944, the company’s second plant after its Akron, Ohio, headquarters. The company originally constructed the plant in order to supply equipment for the US Armed Forces during World War II. By January of 1945, workers began production. According to William O’Neal, General Tire’s president, the new Waco location acknowledged that “the war [had] dissipated the old idea that all manufacturing had to be done in the North, that the South could hope to be no more than an agricultural area.” Congressman W. R. Poage of Texas guided O’Neal in his decision to open a plant in Texas.
The Waco plant produced products such as truck tires for the US Army and Navy, as well as other rubber-based equipment such as rafts and specialized balloons for wartime use. After the war, the company acquired nearly full control of the plant from the US government and began to switch from military production to consumer- and industrial-based products. In November of 1945, the first passenger-car tire was built, and soon after, 2,500 were made daily. By 1954, the plant had doubled in size and was building 6,000 passenger-car, truck, tractor, and farm-service tires.
A large surge in tire production occurred in 1955 when the company received a contract to make original equipment tires. Cars made by General Motors rolled off of the automaker’s assembly lines equipped with tires made in Waco. At the same time, some models of General’s tires included the innovative tubeless design called the “Dual 90.” Other domestic automakers used Waco-built General products, and the plant produced millions of tires that rolled on American roads and beyond.
Due to demand, the Waco plant completed a 40 percent expansion in production capacity in the 1950s, and by 1984, continued success had enabled the size of the plant to grow considerably, with building space covering 49 acres under roof on 139 acres of land.
When the facility in Waco celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 1984, reference was made for the next forty year celebration, but this was not to be. In November of 1985, General Tire & Rubber Co. announced the closure of the Waco plant, which had a staff of more than 1,400 personnel, had an annual payroll of $42 million, and was responsible for $18 million monthly in expenditures into the area’s economy. Despite the plant’s closure, GENCO, the federal credit union chartered in 1953 to meet the financial needs of plant workers, expanded its field of membership and remains in operation in Waco today.
After the closure, an editorial in the Waco Tribune-Herald stated, “The announced closing of Waco’s General Tire plant leaves a cavernous void in Waco’s economy. It could be compared only to Baylor University pulling up stakes.” The number left without jobs from the plant’s closure numbered nearly 10 percent of the area’s manufacturing workforce. The last employees to leave the plant were 130 workers who remained at the General Tire & Rubber mixing facility, making bulk rubber to supply other General plants, until December 1990.
General Tire & Rubber Co. provided livelihoods for thousands of Wacoans throughout the plant’s forty-one years in operation. However, sudden and drastic changes in the automobile industry, the company’s inability to adapt machinery to keep up with changing tire designs and demands, and competition from imports all contributed to the demise of what was once Waco’s largest manufacturing facility.
The General Tire plant remained in disuse for many years, but some saw potential in the empty facility. In 2010, Baylor University heavily renovated the main building for the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative (BRIC). Baylor University, Texas State Technical College, and leading industries use this space for advance research in fields such as engineering, air science, and quantum optics. Students are able to experience some of the latest innovations in these fields and get hands-on experience in their fields of study—helping Waco continue to innovate and train a new generation well into the future.
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]]>A proudly old-fashioned medicine in retro packaging that features a turn-of-the-twentieth-century tot is not only a vestige of Waco’s drug store past—it is a part of its present as well.
The preparation known since 1938 as Percy Medicine was born in Waco in 1904 as Baby Percy Medicine with the collaboration of traveling buggy-whip salesman A. W. Percy and Waco druggist W. S. Merrick.
While traveling by train to relocate to Waco in 1898, the Percy family’s young son e Albert came down with diarrhea—a serious and often fatal illness for children at the turn of the century. At a stop in Kentucky, a country doctor mixed up a concoction of bismuth subnitrate-based medicine. Soon, baby Percy was on the mend and the family continued on its way.
After arriving in Waco, A. W. Percy asked pharmacist W. S. Merrick to prepare the Kentucky recipe to help the child through another bout of upset stomach. The results were so stellar that the druggist asked the lad’s father to join him in a venture to market and sell the elixir, which came to be known as Baby Percy Medicine.
The company, officially born on January 1, 1904, continues to manufacture the remedy to this day. When two former Behren’s Drug Company employees—Frank J. Trau and Louis Collie—joined the company in 1905, it officially incorporated as the Merrick Drug Company. The pair continued to run the business until the 1940s.
Percy Medicine, as it has been called since 1938, was the only product produced by Merrick Medicine Company at the factory at Eighth Street and Webster Avenue in Waco. It is mixed and bottled by hand and contains “a secret formula of bismuth subsalicylate, calcium hydroxide, potassium carbonate, as well as rhubarb extract, sugar, cinnamon, and orange flavoring.” In fact, Percy Medicine holds the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission’s longest continuously active industrial alcohol-use permit, No. 10, issued in 1939 since the preparation contains 5 percent ethyl alcohol.
In the mid-twentieth century, a small crew reported to the second floor of the Percy Medicine building about one Saturday per month to produce six thousand three-ounce bottles. Each batch has a shelf life of three years, according to company publications. The batches were then sold to wholesalers, who distributed the product around the country.
The manufacturer suggests its use for diarrhea, indigestion, cholera infantum, and “summer complaints of children. Relieves sour stomach instantly. A safe and reliable teething and colic medicine for babies.”
However, in the early twenty-first century, Merrick Medicine ceased operations at its Fifth Street location and contracted Humco Holding Group of Texarkana to produce the medicine. In 2013, Katie Croft, owner of Croft Art Gallery, and husband James Croft, purchased the former production plant with plans to renovate the building and relocate the gallery. Their renovation plans never came to fruition, and in the summer of 2015, a local retailer purchased and began to refurbish the building. After spending a few years as home to both The Findery, a home décor retailer, and the Boiler Room, a bar, local group WPV Development purchased the building in hopes of leasing it to a new downtown restaurant or retailer.
Today, the Percy Medicine building stands as a nod to the enterprising efforts of one of Waco’s longest-operating companies, while its recent repurposing keeps locals hopeful that it will retain a vital role at the heart of the city’s economic operations.
]]>For many years, Sanger Avenue Elementary School stood as the most familiar landmark of the Sanger Heights neighborhood. Located in the “Silk Stocking District,” Sanger Avenue Elementary acquired a reputation as one of the premier educational institutions in the city.
A 1903 bond election resulted in the construction of three nearly identical schools. Sanger Avenue School, designed by renowned Waco architect Milton W. Scott, long outlasted its counterparts Bell’s Hill and Brook Avenue Elementary Schools. The two-storied building featured unique architecture and elaborate design, including ornate arches, a rotunda, an upstairs auditorium, and a high roof crowned by a cupola. The building’s heavily Romanesque style included arched windows and doors framed by limestone. Prominently featured turrets stood at the front of the original school building but were removed in a 1930 renovation.
Sanger Avenue School opened in 1904 with John H. Richardson as its first principal. Former students and teachers generally agree that the most influential figure in the history of Sanger Avenue was likely Nina Glass, the school’s second principal. Glass encouraged parents and students to take an active role in education, establishing a mimeographed newsletter for parents called the Ginger Jar and inviting students to save coupons to buy pictures for the school. She published a nationally used arithmetic textbook and frequently attended educational conferences. Well liked by both staff and students, Glass was often seen at the school’s annual May Fete festival, brightly garbed and leading students in a parade around the Maypole.
Glass’s enthusiasm reflected the general atmosphere at Sanger Avenue Elementary. Former students fondly remember dedicated teachers and classrooms ideally suited for learning. Large windows poured light into classrooms where each student’s cast-iron and wooden desk held an inkwell. A spacious and well-stocked library, established after Glass attended a Chicago educators’ conference, invited students to study and read.
The years following Glass’s retirement from Sanger Avenue brought great changes for the small elementary school. By the 1960s, over seven hundred students attended the school, and music classes and a choir were established. Yet the Waco Independent School District (WISD) announced plans for the school’s closure as a part of a busing plan to meet a federal desegregation order. By the 1970s, African American students made up approximately half of the school’s population. Despite the efforts of many to keep the school open, classes ceased at Sanger Avenue in 1974.
Although a portion of the school briefly housed a Head Start program, much of the building soon suffered from years of disuse. Disappointed at seeing such an important piece of Waco’s history sit vacant, Waco attorneys LaNelle and John McNamara purchased the school for $80,000 from WISD. The couple renovated the building, installing a new roof, boarding up broken windows, and removing asbestos. Yet despite their hopes of repurposing the building, perhaps as a charter school, the plans never came through. Another blow was dealt to the historic building when arsonists set fire to it in 2008.
The city of Waco deemed the building unsafe, and in 2010 bulldozers tore the remnants of the structure down, leaving only the entrance archway standing. In 2013, the Waco City Council approved the nonprofit Waco Community Development Corporation’s proposal to build twenty-five homes and the Nina B. Glass Park, which will incorporate the arch, at the site of the former school. This adaptive reuse ensures that the legacy of the school, which stood for over a century as a hallmark of Waco education and distinctive architecture, lives on.
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]]>Waco’s rapid development established it as one of the most significant urban centers of the South by the late nineteenth century. Home to one of the longest-spanning suspension bridges in the country, the once small frontier town owed a great portion of its success to the cotton industry. The strong agricultural tradition established by Stephen F. Austin and Waco’s earliest settlers in the mid-nineteenth century flourished into an international trade system. Farmers grew, ginned, and shipped this “white gold” not only throughout Texas, but also to Europe, South America, and India. Waco reigned in the South as the “King of Cotton” until the onset of the Great Depression.
By 1900, cottonseed was second only to lumber as the most important cash crop in Texas. Mills sprang up all over the state as Texas established itself as the leading processor of cottonseed in the nation, and one of the largest suppliers of cooking oil, vegetable shortening, margarine, and salad oil—byproducts of cottonseed oil.
On January 29, 1910, J. T. Davis established Brazos Valley Cotton Oil, Inc., in Waco. The main operations of the company took place at a mill located on the block between Webster Avenue and Jackson Avenue in the heart of Waco’s business district.
From its onset, the locally owned mill contributed enormously to the economic wealth of the city by purchasing thousands of tons of cottonseed annually from farmers, and employing up to seventy-five men. The railway ran adjacent to the mill, bringing in shipments of cotton from local gins in order to be processed. Workers then extracted oil from the cottonseed to be used for both culinary and industrial purposes. After the mill’s completely modernized machinery processed the seed, the oil was shipped all over the world. In order to prevent unnecessary waste, the mill sold unused meal as cattle feed.
Davis grew the company quickly, and by 1924 had already acquired a second company, the Valley Mills Cotton Oil Company. Though the Great Depression marked the decline of Waco’s cotton industry, business at the cotton oil mill continued for many years. The firm faced several setbacks in the mid-twentieth century, such as the fire which erupted in the mill in 1943, destroying the hull house and mixed feed plant. Yet operations continued, and even flourished. By 1950, workers completed construction on the two 120-foot-tall silos which today are noted as some of Waco’s most notable landmarks.
The latter half of the century saw a turn in the cotton mill’s fortunes. A serious drought followed by widespread Central Texas flooding in 1957 led to sporadic production, and in September the Small Business Administration granted the Brazos Valley Cotton Oil Company a disaster loan. However, the firm was unable to recover, and in July of 1958, stockholders sold the company to David C. Blintliff Interests of Houston. In the mid-1960s, ownership of the plant changed hands again, and the mill served as a storage facility for JPM Feeds. The facility sat vacant in the 1990s, although the Murphys, owners of JPM Feeds, retained ownership of the property.
In 2014, well-known television personalities and Wacoans Chip and Joanna Gaines purchased the mill from Gary Murphy with a vision to restore and repurpose the historic site. After receiving approval from the city, the pair began construction work on Magnolia Market, a $1.4 million project which was completed in October of 2015. Though the festival marketplace offers modern additions such as a retail showroom, a monthly antique and craft market, and a food truck court, the Gaineses are working to retain the historic integrity of the site through efforts such as the preservation of the original silos.
For nearly half a century, the mill bolstered Waco’s economy through its support of local farmers, provision of jobs, and international commerce. Today, the adaptive reuse and preservation efforts of the Gaineses ensure that the mill will retain this role at the heart of the city’s economic development for many years to come.
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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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