My favorite place in Cushing during the early 50s was the periodicals section. It was sort of partitioned off, filled with cushy chairs ... more like an extravagant club room. Best place on campus to spend time between classes.

Plus I had a pass to get into the stacks. It was very quiet and cool in there and a bit spooky. It seems all the walkways were steel and all the shelving and framing were steel with low overhead room. Occasional clanks, groans and thunks came out the bowels of that place. You got accustomed to it I suppose like a baby endures noises inside the womb ... just Cushing readjusting to the load it was carrying.

Veteran's Parade in Bryan

The cadets in formation near the bottom of the previous page were On Military Walk and about to enter Sbisa for a meal. The building on the left is Gathright Hall, then Milner, then Ross Hall. Guion Hall is at the far end of Military Walk. The walk was wide enough for a 16-man front formation. It was narrowed about 50% in the 50s to give more depth for construction between the walk and Houston Street, (i.e., for Beutel Health Center.)

The cadets marching in the parade two pictures above were from Bryan Air Force Base.

Carnegie Library in Bryan:

The Queen Theater, Bryan Texas:

I wish they would put the tower back on Halbouty. That is one of the coolest looking buildings I have ever seen that is still around. A&M needs to really go at restoring the orignial beauty of buildings while making them as functional as a new building.

Ah, the good ol' Halbouty "middle finger" (as my Dad used to call it).

Hey, so Military Walk went from Sbisa to where? Looking at Google Earth, it appears to end at Rudder.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=texas+A%26M+university,+college+station,+tx&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=40.953203,78.662109&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=30.615219,-96.341794&spn=0.005448,0.013121&t=h&om=1

Any pictures of former Brayn AFB before it became Riverside Campus?

Originally Military Walk went from Sbisa to Guion Hall. Sbisa was finished in 1912, Guion in 1918. Guion Hall was demolished in 1971 to make room for Rudder Hall. There were options that could have saved Guion ... but that was in the 70s.

You may have read in an earlier post that at Robert Gates direction the facilities people have received proposal and bids for restoring Military Walk.

12thManMarine ... I have searched thoughout the Archives website for something depicting life at Bryan Air Base during the period 1947-1952 when Fish were housed there. I found nothing except an aerial view of the airfield after all dorms and support facilities had been removed.

This may be a remnant of those days. The college bought 25-30 WWII barracks in the late 40s and moved them onto campus. (Some or all may have come from Bryan Air Base.) Most became apartments for married WWII veteran students and several were used as classrooms on main campus. This one is typical:



Edit: A word about those WWII barracks. During mobilization for WWII, using a standard design and mass procuction with teams of specialists for each phase of construction, the average time to build one of these was one hour. Within six months the Office of War Mobilization turned our 30,000 of these all over the US. Because of quality materials and quality construction many are in use today on military bases. (The shades over the windows were called "eyebrows."

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 2/21/2007 8:27p).]

Bryan circa 1867


(Looking north on Main Street from corner of 26th Street)

Whoa
April 27, 1990:

Villa Maria Academy

quote:

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In 1901 the Villa Maria Academy was moved to Bryan following a Galveston hurricane. The Ursuline Sisters were in charge of the school. The Villa Maria Convent was built on St. Ursula's Hill, a mile northeast of St. Joseph's Church. In 1926 Villa Maria Academy was closed after 25 years in Bryan.

---

Dorm life sometime in the 1920's:

My wife's grandfather is a native of San Francisco and was a pilot in WWII. Out of the blue recently he told the story of making a stop at Bryan Air Field during the war. He spend the night on base and was surprised to learn the mess hall was staffed with German POW's. I assume they came from the POW camp that was at Hearne. Small world.

College Station Depot, 1898:

The Depot again in 1900:

Easterwood Airport, 1943:

Privy:



Caption: 1885-1900. Razed 1900. First "major" attempt of the college to furnish "adequate toilet facilities."

OK, I've monopolized this thread enough for tonight.

p_bubel ... You did a great service with that last post. That is the first photo of the old buildings that shows the original Infirmary ... now that we know the Infirmary was near the old Privy we just need to locate the Privy in another photo and we can place the Infirmary.

So we need an aerial photo from between 1885 and 1900 if we are going to use the privy as a reference.

That may prove difficult. However there is also a barn in that picture.

fossil,

quote:

---

The old hospital does stand out in that view. It was built in 1916 and remained in service until Beutel was built in 1973. At some point it picked up the name of Special Services Building.

But that was not the first hospital. An Infirmary was built in 1895 and was continued in some sort of use until 1932. I have not been able to locate that building in any of the aerial views of the period ... perhaps it will show up in some photo submitted to this thread. (I am thinking that because of the fear of communicable disease such as Yellow and Typhoid Fever during the period it made sense to locate the Infirmary a distance from the core of the campus. Have you seen this building?

---

Photo from 1895:



Now, the interesting caption to this photo:

quote:

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This second hospital provided a residence for the surgeon and contained four large wards. It could accommodate 36 patients. It was later moved 500 feet away from its' original location and converted to apartments.

---

Yeah, I had to come back before bed.

The burning of Old Main, 1912:

I think I found the infirmary again, just in the background of this image of Bagley Hall (Textile Building):

fossil,

I did find out that the second hospital that was evntually replaced by Beutel was turned into the Northside Laundry.

http://cushing.tamu.edu/collections/images/Pages/viewtext.php?s=browse&tid=7793&route=browseby.php&category=278&by=category&s=browse# I don't know if the first two buildings shared the same site though.

[This message has been edited by p_bubel (edited 2/22/2007 1:02a).]

Spyderman - THe first Dairy Queen was on Texas Avenue in Bryan, just around the "bend" on the right hand side. It might have been where the Der Wienerschnitzel is now.

Deluxe Burger was the original Handy Burger owned by the Moon famimly. Mrs. Moon still lives in the East Gate area and last year she loaned her scrapbooks and photos to Project HOLD (HOLD.cstx.gov). There are some pretty interesting photos and facts about that place in our files.They owned the second microwave in Brazos County, the first was at St. Joseph's Hospital.

LWInk2

p_bubel ... You may well have found the old Infirmary. The roofline and one corner seem to fit ... but it seems smaller than what I was expecting. It had to be there however ... in other photos it was obvious Bagley was hiding something. But I am bothered by the location ... the location behind Bagley is a poor location for an Infirmary and equally bad for apartments.

I know the second Hospital was late in life called the "Special Services" building so something like laundry rooms for dorms residents may be the type services that name implies.

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 2/22/2007 7:27a).]

fossil - I think that is it. It looks to be the right size and while you think it may be an odd location, it is almost 100' from any other building and is nearly the last one on campus. Also visible in that photo is the privy, sans chimney.

Denied ... I agree. That is the Infirmary. The only question now is if that is the new or original location. An earlier post by p_bubel stated that it had been moved 500 feet.

Well seeing as the Infirmary was built in 1895 and the Privy was raised in 1900, and in this picture it is about the last building on campus; I think this was the original location. As campus grew later and the new hospital was built I think it was probably moved around WWI out to the new edge of campus. That is all deductive reasoning though.

Bagley Hall pictured above in a post by p_bubel (beside the large smokestack) is an interesting building. Built in 1904 it was originally known as the Textile Engineering Building. Over the years it was used for various other purposes, for what I have no idea. It was demolished in 1972 to make way for the Harrington Education Center to occupy the spot. This photo shows Bagley in its original use.



It made sense in the early 1900s that A&MC would have a major interest in textile engineering. Before the Civil War products were generally stored and shipped in barrels or tins. Southeastern states by that time had already established a textile industry as a means of marketing its cotton. The demand was there for course materials such as calico, denim and canvas in addition to the higher threadcount goods for finer fabrics. Texas was emerging as the leading cotton producer. Textile Engineering was a natural fit for A&M to provide graduates trained in an industry vital to the economic interest of Texas.

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 2/22/2007 11:43a).]

I found the Privy again:



It's not a very helpful photo though.