fossil_ag: Brazos County Historian Laureate.

Okay, fossil, the ball is in your court. Call me.

Great idea....assuming others are invited (like me).

I would never exclude anyone.

Thank you one and all for the nice comments. I am grateful that some of my offerings are received in the good spirit I have intended ... although more commonly no doubt I come across as a cranky cantankerous curmudgeon on some topics. Blame father time for my lapses in good manners.

As for the suggestion of some sort of presentation to small gatherings, I have considered that but rejected the idea as impractical. For the most part I must depend on the photos available to the public in the TAMU Archives to illustrate certain points. Those are only available on the website. I suppose it would be possible to have selected photos converted to 35mm slides but the time and expense would be burdensome ... and even then would lack the flexibility of leading the discussion in a Texags Forum.

I am hooked on the free-wheeling nature of threads on these Forums. I have participated in several from the West Texas Forum to History to Ags Only where the views have gone over the 9,000 count with hundreds of posts from any number of contributors. With such broad participation by posters, illustrations can be presented from the far reaches of the internet that expand the reaches of the subject beyond that of a single presenter.

The photo posted by AngryBeaver and the introduction of the subject of the I&GN Railroad is a perfect example of the free flowing threads I prefer ... where the history flows freely from many contributors, branching off when a new topic arises from an illustration and takes a life of its own.

The internet with a dozen keyboards clicking allows that sort of dynamics in a discussion and brings history to life. Such is not possible with a scripted spiel, slide presentations or even walking tours. The flexibility of Texags is the way to go IMO.

To illustrate: AB's point about the I&GN piqued my interest and I do not know anything about it. There may be a history link there that we need to discover. For example, I was curious about why Whiteselle Cherry Red bricks made in Corsicana were the bricks of choice for the earliest buildings on campus until about 1908. I found the answer by studying the progress of the H&TC railroad coming from Houston that reached Millican in 1861 ... and construction stopped there for the duration of the Civil War. After the War construction resumed and the H&TC reached Bryan in 1869 and Corsicana in 1871. Ah Hah! Corsicana was the only source of cherry red bricks on the only railroad available to A&M College in 1875.

Not being from Texas but living here in aggieland, I find these discussions fascinating. Keep up the great work!

Dragonfly - do you have the MLS# for 208 Pershing?

208 Pershing is MLS #48792

Believe it's 48792.

I see the link isn't pointing to the full listing. Sorry about that. You can do an advanced search by address to grab it, as well.

This link should work. (I just removed the session identifier—the "CISNDID=..." part—from the URL fly used.)

From the city website re historic markers...in order to qualify


Structure Criteria
1. A home must be fifty years old or older,
AND
a. Have historic significance to the University or to the community
OR
b. Have architectural significance.
Any house or other structure over fifty years old is eligible for consideration. Every house moved from campus automatically qualifies for a marker and designation as a historical house. Approval for a structure marker will be based on several areas of significance:
1. Historical Significance: A structure which has been the site of significant events, or which has hosted the life and labors of important community personalities, whether or not it is of significant architectural importance. Was the structure associated with an event or a person important to the local scene?
2. Architectural Significance: A structure which is an excellent example of a certain architectural style at a certain time. Is the structure a good example of College Station's architectural style at a given period? Does it display unique architectural details from that period?
3. Intrinsic Significance: A structure that was designed or constructed by an important architect or builder, or that utilizes a local building material or product. Was it designed by an important local architect, or built by an important local builder? Did the brick, wood, or windows, etc., come from local sources?
4. Social Significance: A structure that demonstrates a particular lifestyle in College Station, the A&M community, or Texas. Does the structure show a characteristic way in which people lived in this area in the past?
Information you would want to include in your documentation would be: the name of the architect and the builder, a description of the building materials used, and the year built. Any interesting stories associated with the structure are also welcome.
5. Preservation and Maintenance of Property: The property must be maintained to appropriate community and neighborhood standards. If the ownership of the home changes after the marker is awarded, the designation may be subject to review.

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I think this goes beyond fossil's definition, and as I said earlier how "historic" as a concept is defined is pretty subjective anyway. Homes from the late 50s are eligible by this criteria and there are probably some good examples out there of the late 50s/early 60s architecture in CS that would fit.

Wow. I beat dragonfly to an answer by 9 hours and 17 minutes. I doubt that will happen again.

I died laughing earlier...I hit my computer briefly, saw the question, looked it up and posted without reading anything else. Then I got my coffee and headed off to a meeting. When I got back, I finally read the whole thread.

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Good luck finding a house there! They are on the market and then off before you can blink.

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Time from listing to sale on the most recent sale on Pershing was 4.5 hours. cash.

AC:
Wow! Can you post more details (price, address?) or is that super-secret?

I am told that the $350K listing price for 208 Pershing includes teardown, i.e. for $350K you get the lot.

aggiegal99 .......

I do not have permission to provide that info. from the buyer or seller, so I would prefer not to. My mother has lived on Pershing for 45 years. The properties rarely are on the market long enough for a sign to go up, so the $1 million home at Pershing & Park Place and the one at 208 are out of the norm.

The residents are very organized and actively protect the neighborhood through their HOA with the city. They are hell on wheels about on-street parking and strive to keep student rental activity at bay. It is a very nice neighborhood to live in.

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They are hell on wheels about on-street parking

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What, do they go around with a cordless grinder and vandalize the wheels of any vehicle parked on the street?

No, they don't do that. They successfully lobbied the city council which resulted in the fire dept. requesting No Parking signs on both sides of Pershing from Geo. Bush on south. Signs were planted almost immediately.

I have a house for sale in Historic South Oakwood. It's at 1006 Park Place. It's got quite an Aggie history. Was the Corps Commandant's house on campus...moved off when they built the MSC. It was built in 1915, completely restored. It's been on the Historic Homes Tour. A great old military house in that there are lots of right angles and the walls are all wood. It has a large front porch, 4 bedrooms and a full attic that has 3 separate rooms. It is 3 storeys tall. Check it out at www.coventryglenrealty.com, reference #49484.

I love the Southside Historic whatever you call it. My daughter owned a house there for about a dozen years and sold it about 5 years ago. But just a bit of warning to prospective buyers in the neighborhood. The following quote is not to be taken lightly.

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The residents are very organized and actively protect the neighborhood through their HOA with the city. They are hell on wheels about on-street parking and strive to keep student rental activity at bay. It is a very nice neighborhood to live in.

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True story that occurred at the intersection of Pershing and Park Place about six years ago.

A fellow owned a bungalow on one of the corner lots at that intersection. He had made plans to move the house on that lot to another about a block away and rebuild on the vacaated lot. He had obtained all the clearances from the city of CS and had the house movers out and ready to go to work.

I drove by just after some lady who said she was the head of the Homeowners Assn had just informed the property owner that she had called the city and shut the move down because she had not approved the plan. The property owner was irate.

She was standing in the middle of the street redfaced and still full of fight and I asked her what was going on. I got an earful that I was not sympathetic to. She was successful in holding up the move for a few days but the homeowner finally got his house moved.

I chuckled for the next year of so as I drove by the vacated lot at a jumble of broken concrete from foundations and steps and assorted other materials the owner left behind for his female nemesis to admire as she patrolled her neighborhood. (I have not been back that way in several years and the rubble may still be there for all I know.

fossil .......

That property is now occupied by a 4,100 sq. ft (6,000 sq. ft under roof) home currently for sale at $1 million. Your story rings true, as I believe I know the people you described.

www.316pershing.com

[This message has been edited by AC Hopper (edited 6/13/2008 12:48a).]

IMHO this is one butt ugly house - too big for the lot, not in character with the neighborhood, just screams "look at me and how much money I have". If you want a limestone house live in the Hill Country.

My wife just saw this thread and offered her two cents .........

"Don't be wasting your money in that neighborhood. ... Overpriced and too many college kids running around ... No privacy and cars driving up and down the streets all the time."

Oh, well ... each must be allowed to have their own opinion. I am thinking about putting her in "a home."

It may be of interest to some of you to take a tour of the faculty homes on campus before some of them made the trek to Southside Historic district in the late 1930s-50s.

The photo below dated ca. 1900 shows what I think to be the first five faculty homes built on campus in 1888 at a cost of $3,000 each.

The building on the left with the the turrets was the first Assembly Hall built in 1889 (Hart Hall would replace Assembly Hall at that location in 1930) and the dormitory on the right is Foster Hall built in 1899. The five houses were built facing Lamar Street, the future location of the MSC and Rudder complex.



High ceilings, high pitched roofs and pier and beam foundations were the style of that period. When moving time came, the houses were cut into managable blocks, fireplaces and porches removed, and the housemovers did their thing ... in the 30s and later with trucks, in earlier times before motor vehicles, teams of mules supplied the power to skid frame structures to new location.

The photo below was undated but appears to be the same 1900 time period as the photo above.

The photo was taken from the roof of Old Main looking south. The small two story building on the left is Pfeuffer Hall, a dormitory built in 1887, and you recognize the first Assembly Hall on the right. (Pfeuffer Hall was also the location of the first A&M Consolidated classrooms.)

The five houses in a row are facing what would later become Throckmorton Street. The first couple of houses in the line would be removed to make room for the Trigon in 1924. The lone house across the street from the others was one of the first five built on Lamar Street and was removed in 1917 to make way for Guion Hall.



The next photo was dated 1927-30 by the TAMU archivists. Newer built homes reveal the changing styles of architecture and a move to build more and less expensive houses to meet the needs of the growing faculty. I suspect the houses in this photo were located in the area just to the north of Kyle Field.

You may recognize some of these houses in a modified form in Southside ... but do not expect to see exact replicas. Remember that major dismantleing of the homes occurred during the moving process.



If you would care to continue this tour of homes, visit the website below:

http://cushing.tamu.edu/collections/images/Pages/browseby.php?s=browse&by=category&category=249
(Left click on the photos for enlargements.)

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 6/13/2008 3:06p).]

Wow, the house just to the right of the Assembly Hall in this photo...


...looks like it could very well be the house for sale at 1006 Park Place in this photo!

For those of you interested in the history of the local area I refer you to a bountiful publication, A Guide to Historic Brazos County, published in 2003 by the Brazos Historical Society. Follow the link below for an online PDF version.

http://www.brazosheritage.org/pdfs/historicbrazosbrochure.pdf

In line with the original subject of this thread regarding the Southside Historic District and the faculty homes moved to that area in the late 1930s, the linked publication presents these two nuggets of information:

1. On page 19, paragraph 45, it states that by 1938 there were more than 100 houses on campus. The Board of Directors decreed that all housing except for the president, commandant, surgeon and a few others, was to be vacated by 1941. Faculty and staff were allowed to buy and move the houses, in which they lived. Most houses sold for between $200 and $800.(Edit - The advent of WWII interrupted this schedule. Relocation of the houses continued into the 1950s. Some were used as classrooms during and after the war.)

2. On page 21, paragraph 54, 611 Montclair Avenue. Built in 1890, (Edit - 1878?) this is probably the oldest house in College Station. This medium sized Queen Anne with neoclassical features was originally located on campus and is easily identifiable from old campus photos as one of the five houses which faced the Drill Field. (Edit - Facing Lamar Street) It was occupied for a time by Mark Francis, Dean of Veterinary Medicine before being sold in 1948 and moved to this location.

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 6/14/2008 10:15p).]

quote:

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Wow, the house just to the right of the Assembly Hall in this photo......looks like it could very well be the house for sale at 1006 Park Place in this photo!

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There are some differences in the houses so I don't know for sure but things do get changed over the years plus I am told that 1006 Park Place was at one time the commandant's house.

Which commandant and when? I don't have that info but maybe the seller's agent does. But that's one snippet of info to consider for the curious.

Rookie2 ... If the house at 1006 Park Place truly was occupied by the Commandant, it could well have been the residence of one or all of the folks listed below:

1938-1940 Col. George F. Moore
1940-1941 Lt. Col. J. A. Watson
1941-1946 Col. M. D. Welty
1946-1948 Col. G. S. Meloy
1948-1952 Col. Haydon L. Boatner

A former residence of George Moore or Haydon Boatner would truly be of historical importance in Aggie lore.

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 6/14/2008 11:34p).]

Were you aware that for almost 60 years A&M College would be served by two College Stations?(This post complements a photo provided by Angry Beaver on 6/11.)

I have mentioned the Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) railroad whose construction was interrupted by the Civil War at Millican and resumed after the War to arrive in Bryan in 1869 before continuing on northward to Hearne and beyond. This was the first railroad to provide service to the budding A&M College.

But there was another railroad in the area. The Illinois & Great Northern (I&GN) started up at Hearne in the late 1860s as an east-west line going from Hearne to Longview. This line was later extended to Austin before going south. In 1900, the I&GN built a line south from Hearne to Bryan and parallel to the H&TC tracks passing the West Gate of A&M College.

From here I will let a writer from the Guide to Historic Brazos County describe the events. From Page 20, Paragraph 48, of the Guide we find:

quote:

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College Station Railroad Depot...... From 1876, when the A&M College opened its doors, until 1883, there was no formal railroad depot to serve the campus, however, the H&TC Railroad made regular stops here to drop off students, faculty, materials and supplies. In 1883, H&TC built a depot located approximately 800 yards from the Old Main building which was used as a passenger station.

In 1900 the I&GN Railroad extended their rail line to College Station and built a much larger depot east of the H&TC depot. Around this time, the H&TC moved their depot to a location on campus to be used as housing and built a new station to replace it. These depots served as the focal point of activity for the campus and the community until they were demolished.

The last passenger service to use these depots was on June 7, 1959. The H&TC depot was razed in the 1950s and the I&GN depot was razed in 1966...

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Below is a photo of the original depots taken in about 1900.



In later years the H&TC Railroad became a part of Southern Pacific Railroad and the I&GN became a part of Missouri Pacific (MoPac.)

The photo taken in or before 1900 below shows the household goods of an arriving or departing faculty member being processed at the College Station depot. A local transportation expert facilitates the transfer of cargo.



The photo below is an aerial view of campus taken in 1925. This shows the location of the two depots in relation to West Gate. The I&GN station is on the east side in the photo and the newer and larger H&TC station is on the west side.

The large white building across Wellborn Road from West Gate is the old Campus Creamery building. Note the faculty housing area just south of the Drill Field.



[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 6/15/2008 2:24p).]

Fossil, You have your railroads a bit mixed up.

I&GN stood for International and Great Northers, not Illinois. And if you want to get really nitpicky, a subsidiary of the I&GN, the Calvert, Waco and Brazos Valley, whihc built the I&GN's original route beteen Ft. Worth and Spring, via Waco. The Missouri Pacific bought the I&GN in 1925, although the Ft. Worth-Spring line was not as important as the Laredo to Longview line which runs through Hearne.

The I&GN was the last of the major routes from Houston to D/FW completed, so it had lost fo curves and much of it between Waco and Navasota was built too close to the river. In the mid 1960's, MP decided to fix this by using the Southern Pacific from Navasota to Bryan and buying an old Southern Pacific brnace line from Marlin to Waco, allowing them to abandon their old line.

There are still traces of the old I&GN line, which ran to the east of the current tracks, out near Wellborn and Koppe Bridge. In fact, if I remember correctly, there is even an I&GN road out that way.

The Southern Pacific was the main passenger service provide in town, with two daily streamliners in the 1940' and 50's and an overnight train. The day streamliners were the Sunbeam and the Hustler, which ran from Houston to Dallas and the overnight train was the Owl. This picture

http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00401481+RR-1481

is a black and white shot of one of the streamlined Sunbeam engines in Dallas. The side panels on these engines were painted the same way as this locomotive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:4449idle.jpg

A kind of brilliant red orange. The passenger cars were painted to match as well.

By the mid 50's cars had killed the business on these train and they were discontinued. I beleieve the Owl was the last to go in 1958. The MoPac passenger trains were gone by around 1960, and the stations had little purpose after that.

squirrelhunter .... Thanks for the correction on the International name in I&GN. When I saw your post I doped slapped myself and said, "Did I really say Illinois?"

As for the information about the various names and ownerships of rail lines during those early days, I surrender completely. One time I tried to follow the meanderings about Texas by Jay Gould with his involvement with the MKT lines and Missouri Pacific and got a terrible headache. In the early days of railroads, it seems that it can be best described as a cross between Pacman and Hungry Hippos. From that I resolved to focus my attention on the bare set of rails at the point of discussion.

This old railroad info is really intersting.

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There are still traces of the old I&GN line, which ran to the east of the current tracks, out near Wellborn and Koppe Bridge.

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It's nice to finally put some pieces together. I grew up hunting/fishing/hanging out at a friend's farm out in the Cawthorn and Allenfarm area. Several of the bridges out there always seemed unsually sturdy to me, especially for dirt roads on a farm. One day it came up that one of the main roads out on their property used to be an old railroad line - the bridges were leftovers of the old railroad. My buddy really didn't know much about it, though.

Their property is pretty large and, on the north end, is divided by another landowner's setup. I've only been on the north part of the property once, but I remember seeing broken pieces of old railroad tracks and a partially fallen-down trestle. It all fell in line with where the tracks ran on the other side of the property, too.

I never really thought about it enough to put two and two together, but because of this thread I just hopped on Google Maps and followed the old line. It turns into I&GN road in CS, so it was obviously part of the old route that was abandoned in the mid 1900s.

Emeril and squirrelhunter ... That pretty much settles questions about I&GN Road, now perhaps someone can enlighten us on the mystery of F&B Road.

Feeding and Breeding?