Born of an alliance of doctors, religious Sisters, and businessmen seeking to bring better medical care to Waco, Providence Hospital has been serving the community for over a century.

Prior to the twentieth century, Waco’s home-based medical system meant doctors traveled to houses or hotels to care for sick patients. However, when local facilities proved inadequate to care for a patient who later had to be transferred to New Orleans for treatment, Dr. James W. Hale lobbied for change. With the help of the Waco Business Men’s Club (precursor to the Chamber of Commerce), Hale requested aid from the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul to establish a hospital in the rapidly developing Central Texas town. Ground broke on the new facility in 1903, and in November 1904, three Sisters left their Maryland community to begin caring for the sick here locally. Waco’s first hospital opened on January 11, 1905.

Founded upon a commitment to serve the suffering, sick, and poor of society, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul operated medical facilities, schools, orphanages, and other institutions throughout the country—including in Dallas and Austin—by the time Providence Sanitarium opened at 1700 Providence Drive (as noted on the Waco History map). Yet a barrage of anti-Catholic sentiment following the building’s dedication left the hospital bereft of private patients. The Daughters of Charity built up the hospital’s reputation in the community by caring for indigent patients through a city government contract and by treating sick employees of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Railroad.

Providence continued to seek out new ways to serve the community. In 1906, the institution established a nursing school, and later, a soup kitchen, clothing donation center, and dispensary. The hospital cemented its reputation in the medical community when it proved to be a critical resource during a 1911 outbreak of spinal meningitis. During World War I, the Sisters set up a twenty-five-bed tent at Camp MacArthur to provide medical services to soldiers until the military could construct an infirmary. When an F5 tornado tore through downtown in 1953, Providence—the closest hospital to the disaster—admitted and cared for more than two hundred patients until they could be sent home or transferred to another facility.

To meet the needs of the growing hospital and community, Providence renovated its facilities multiple times and continually added departments, beginning in 1912 and continuing until the hospital moved to its present location in 1989. Providence remained a leader in the medical field, opening a Crippled Children’s Hospital in partnership with the McLennan County Medical Society in 1948, a heart clinic in 1950, and a psychiatric division—the first of its kind in Central Texas—two years later. Modernized facilities replaced the original hospital buildings in the 1970s, and by the early 1980s, a freestanding psychiatric hospital was constructed off of Highway 6. Just a few years later, the Daughters of Charity Health System Board of Directors approved the relocation of the hospital’s acute care and surgical facilities to a new complex on that same land near Highway 6, with plans to convert the old site into a housing complex for low-income seniors.

In the years since its move, Providence Healthcare Network has remained dedicated to improving the health of the community, constantly modernizing and expanding facilities and employing cutting edge techniques and technological innovations. To this day, the hospital remains committed to the Daughters of Charity’s mission to be a ministry to the suffering through the provision of health care.

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On the corner of Eighth Street and Washington Avenue once stood a Catholic school and convent that taught thousands of students during its years of operation from 1874 to 1946. The Academy of the Sacred Heart received its name partially because the property on which it stood was purchased on June 12, 1874—the day of the Feast of the Sacred Heart.

The academy’s origins lay in Namur, Belgium, through the Institute of the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur. The Cistercian Father Nicholas Joseph Minsart served as one of the founders, and he elected Sister Claire (originally Rosalie Niset) to preside over the community in Belgium following his death. In 1863, the now Mother Claire encouraged a group of Sisters of St. Mary of Namur to come to the United States to assist Catholic immigrant communities. The Sisters of St. Mary set up their first house in Lockport, New York. In 1873, at the request of Bishop Claude-Marie Dubuis of the Diocese of Galveston, a group of the Sisters moved from New York to Waco to start a house and establish a school. This would soon become the Academy of the Sacred Heart.

On October 1, 1873, the school opened in a residence at Sixth Street and Washington Avenue. The first Sisters of St. Mary to begin instructing at the Waco academy were Mother Emelie, Sister Mary Angela, and Sister Stanislaus. Although only three students attended that opening day, the school soon grew and the Sisters’ influence spread throughout the state. Within a year, the first brick was laid on what would become an impressive campus of Victorian-style brick structures that housed the academy for the rest of its existence.

Sacred Heart Academy was initially devoted to the education of girls, but the Waco academy—a day school offering first through twelfth grade—soon made exceptions. Sacred Heart allowed boys to attend grammar school through the eighth grade, reserving ninth through twelfth grade for young women. Only girls were allowed boarding privileges.

The academy welcomed students from non-Catholic denominations, too. The 1876 Waco city directory describes it as follows: “Its course of study is complete and comprehensive, and among its patrons and pupils are the representatives of the various denominations of the city and county. Its conduct and discipline are free from sectarianism.”

However, student enrollment had dwindled by 1946. Only six girls boarded that year which would become the last year of operation for the academy. After more than seventy years, so ended a chapter in the ministry of a group of Sisters who came from New York “to open a school for young ladies in a rough-and-tumble Waco celebrated for its gun fights.” After the academy’s closing, the building and site were sold and slated for demolition. This didn’t happen until July 1951, “when the last brick was carried away.” Consequently, the area where the academy once stood for decades was turned into a parking lot.

Despite the Waco school’s closure, the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur remained active missionaries and educators throughout Texas and the rest of the nation. A recent quote from the Sisters describes the way in which their “early calling to Christian formation continues at the heart of [their] ministry.” This “early calling” that brought them here to Waco in 1873, with their roots in Belgium, led to their passion to influence many in their mission work in faraway lands—even in a “rough-and-tumble Waco” of the 1870s.

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The first African American mayor of a major city in Texas, Oscar DuCongé rose to local prominence through his civil service and selfless dedication to improving life for all Wacoans.

Born in Pass Christian, Mississippi, on April 19, 1909, Oscar DuCongé spent the majority of his childhood in New Orleans. The ninth of fourteen children, DuCongé went to work at an early age, sweeping floors and cleaning utensils in the barbershop where his father worked. His mother taught music and gave sewing lessons in their home. DuCongé later said his family’s budget was operated as a “community chest,” with the girls working at home, the boys getting odd jobs to pour into the pot, and his mother disbursing the funds as needed. The family’s thrifty ways enabled DuCongé and nine of his siblings to receive college educations.

DuCongé earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Xavier University in New Orleans in 1931. He married his childhood sweetheart, Mary, who was better known by her nickname Kitty, in 1937. Just a few years later in 1942, he was drafted into the US Army. After completing his basic training in Alabama, DuCongé was assigned to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, were he worked in the finance department. When his regiment was transferred to Italy, he volunteered for combat duty. Assigned to an infantry unit, he came under fire in the Italian Campaign before he left the service in September of 1945.

Following his service overseas, DuCongé returned to school to get a master’s degree in social work in 1946 from Atlanta University, and completed other postgraduate work at Southern University in Baton Rouge, University of Pittsburgh, and Xavier University while Mary completed her own studies.

When Oscar received a job offer from the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Waco in 1948, the DuCongés picked up their lives and moved to 1209 Preston Street (as indicated on the Waco History map), quickly becoming involved in civic life in the city. DuCongé left his job at the VA in the 1950s in order to co-own and operate the Doris Miller Memorial Park. He served as the secretary-treasurer of the park from 1955 until 1972. In June of 1966, he was named director of Neighborhood Centers for the Economic Opportunities Advancement Corporation (EOAC) in Waco. Although the position did not pay much, it presented an opportunity for DuCongé to become involved in social work again and to tackle the issue of widespread poverty. Six years later, his job title was changed to director of community programming.

When DuCongé ran but failed to obtain a seat on the school board in 1970, constituents drafted him to run for city council in 1972. Defeating his white opponent, high school administrator M. D. Ritcherson, DuCongé earned the affection of his ward and the respect of his council colleagues. He ran unopposed in 1974 to retain the seat. 

DuConge’s election built upon decades-old efforts to reform voting practices in Waco. When the city saw its first black candidate for city council in 1950, Waco’s white decision-makesr facilitated a shift from a single-member district system to all at-large seats, in which each seat was voted on by the entire city. Given that Waco was majority-white, this shift all but assured the exclusion of black candidates from local political office. In 1972, the League of Women Voters started a committee that challenged the system two years later by bringing suit against the city of Waco. Austin lawyer David Richards — husband of future Gov. Ann Richards — took on the case. The petitioners were William Haliburton, Wilbert Austin, Lela Briscoe, Roland Arriola, Pete Arvizu, Frances Ortega, Kathy Patteson, Myrtle McKinney and Jane Derrick. On April 19, 1976, an Austin judge ruled in favor of the Wacoans and ordered the city to change to a single-member district system of electing the council. While the fight for social and systemic equality remained elusive for many Wacoans of color, this ruling ushered in a period in which elected officials began to more accurately represent their constituencies.

The respect DuCongé garnered on the council led to his election as the city’s mayor. As reported by the Dallas Morning News on April 13, 1974: “Black and Catholic, DuCongé was selected this week by his white fellow councilmen to serve as mayor of this predominantly Baptist city which in the past has been white ruled.”

DuCongé saw the vote of his colleagues as indicative of societal changes sweeping the nation in that late civil rights era and sought to serve as the mayor of the whole city rather than of one faction. He dedicated his time as mayor to improving the lives of as many people as possible. After leaving the council in 1975, DuCongé remained active in civic affairs and charity in Greater Waco, promoting racial harmony and fighting to eradicate poverty. He passed away on July 26, 1978.

A dedicated civil servant, Oscar DuCongé set a precedent for overcoming racial divisions and endeavoring to make the community a better place for all citizens. 

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Calle Dos emerged in the early twentieth century as a haven for Mexican immigrants fleeing border violence and rapidly developed into a center of culture and community for Waco’s Hispanic population.

Prior to the establishment of Calle Dos, Mexican immigrants settled on the banks of the Brazos River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in an area called Little Mexico, or Mexican Sandtown. The dawn of the Great War and arrival of a military base in Waco in 1917 led to the city shutting down the Reservation, a legal red-light district situated upon the banks of the Brazos River to the west of Sandtown. As prostitutes and madams left the city, houses sat vacant.

Around the same time as the closure of the Reservation, Mexican American laborers and immigrants fleeing violence at the border caused by the Mexican Revolution arrived in Waco. Although some Wacoans turned up their noses at the idea of moving into a formerly disreputable area, many immigrants saw the affordable houses as an opportunity to begin a new life.

Never an officially designated neighborhood, the boundaries of Calle Dos were often disputed. Some claimed the area simply to be an extension of Sandtown, while others claimed it as its own entity bounded by Fourth Street, Washington Avenue, modern-day Waco Drive, and the Brazos River. In either case, it is clear that the community along the Brazos grew to be a tight-knit center of Hispanic culture.

Many Calle Dos residents opened up businesses along Second Street, transforming the once avoided area into a busy thoroughfare. Various organizations established in the area to serve the immigrant community also contributed to the neighborhood’s sense of identity. A Baptist mission formed on Second Street in the late 1800s, which became the Mexican Baptist Mission in 1907. The Sociedad Mutualista Mexicana de Jornaleros formed in 1924 in order to assist Mexicans with their rights, jobs, funerals, and other needs, occupying the Baptist mission’s original building on Second Street. That same year, Franciscans arrived in Waco and established a Catholic church which soon became a center of community for Waco’s Hispanic population.

Former residents recall the poor but tight-knit neighborhood fondly. Most houses lacked indoor plumbing, and residents often tacked cardboard to windows and walls to keep the cold out during the winter. Yet many most vividly remember the vibrant community life centered in festivals and dances put on by area churches and fraternal organizations. Neighbors gathered at La Pila, a spring-fed fountain just off the banks of the river, and children often played and bathed in its waters. Hispanic community members who resided in other areas of Waco, such as on cotton farms in areas surrounding the city, also claimed ties to the area due to the wealth of cultural opportunities which Calle Dos provided Mexican Americans.

The beginning of Waco’s urban renewal program in 1958, established to alleviate inner-city blight, led to the demise of the culturally rich neighborhood. Local leaders declared portions of the city blighted and, after compensating owners, claimed the properties and demolished any structures not meeting the program’s requirements. The project cleared areas along the Brazos River from modern-day La Salle Avenue to several blocks past Waco Drive. The homes of Calle Dos were demolished and La Pila stopped up and buried, forcing residents to disperse to other areas throughout the city and state.

Today, only a few remnants of the former neighborhood stand, including a grove of ancient live oak trees, St. Francis on the Brazos Catholic Church, and the partially buried remains of La Pila. Recent efforts to excavate La Pila and establish a historical marker for the fountain which once centered an entire community reveal the importance of the former neighborhood. For half a century, Calle Dos provided cultural identity and community for Waco’s Mexican American population and the efforts of community leaders today ensure that this legacy will not be forgotten. 

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