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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The McDermott Motors building is a prime example of the way in which many of Waco’s notable architectural structures have been adapted throughout history in order to continually serve the city.

Wilford Dees McDermott opened a Buick dealership in Waco with the help of his father-in-law, Robert Buchanan, in 1926. Buchanan hoped running a business would help McDermott and his daughter settle down and become more responsible, and thus provided McDermott with the funds to construct a brand new building for the dealership on Washington Avenue which opened to the public on November 1, 1928.

The McDermott Motors building reflected the extravagant tastes of its owner and namesake. McDermott commissioned renowned Waco architect Milton Scott to design a Spanish Colonial Revival-style building, complete with a flat red tile roof, Mediterranean-influenced transom windows, and terra-cotta details. The showroom featured decorative spiral columns and scrolled metal balconies, as well as an embellished fireplace. McDermott filled the state-of-the-art facilities with the newest available technology and overbuilt the front portion of the store to accommodate future expansions.

Unfortunately, the McDermotts’s extravagant spending combined with a tough economy led to the business’ end at the onset of the Great Depression. After Robert Buchanan passed away in 1930, McDermott struggled to keep the Buick dealership afloat. The shop closed, but McDermott refused to sell the building, instead choosing to lease it to Waco’s National Guard unit.

Prior to the 1930s, the National Guard made use of the grounds of Waco’s famous Cotton Palace for their training and storage facility. Yet the demise of the cotton industry concurrent with the Depression led to the closure of the Cotton Palace. The vacant McDermott building—with its spacious, sturdy structure which lent itself to vehicle maintenance and storage—proved to be an ideal replacement. After the lease began in 1931, the National Guard temporarily renamed the structure Fort Fiske Wright, to honor a revered local officer who died heroically in World War I. In addition to its utilitarian purposes, Fort Fiske Wright served as a sort of civic center where veterans gathered to smoke and play dominoes and their sons brought dates to dances.

The advent of the Second World War led to the building transitioning from military use to wartime aviation production. Few National Guardsmen remained in Waco, and in 1941, Fort Fiske Wright closed. In 1943, McDermott leased the property to North American Aviation, one of the US military’s main suppliers of aircraft. The company painted over the windows and the army supervised the assembly site, but despite these efforts at secrecy, Wacoans discussed the airplane wings which were constructed there and shipped elsewhere for assembly. 

At the conclusion of World War II, the McDermott Motors building served once again as an automobile dealership for a short time when leased to D. T. Hicks, before entering a period of twenty years of disuse. Although McDermott received several offers from prospective buyers, he refused to sell the property until 1978. For a short time, a Christian bookstore resided in the historic building, and beginning in 1988, the charitable organization Caritas ran its operations there. Yet after a furnace fire resulted in enormously high repair costs, the building once again sat vacant.

The turn of the century brought about new uses for the McDermott Motors building. Texas physician Len Dippel purchased it in 2001, completing some renovations on the building as well as an application to list the building on the National Register of Historic Places. However, his plans to adapt the building into loft-style apartments were never realized, and in 2014, local entrepreneurs Joel and Josh Peel, owners of Hole in the Roof Marketing and Sticker Universe, respectively, bought the property. The brothers plan to complete renovations on the historic building and move their growing businesses into the unique and spacious structure.

This recent revival and repurposing of the McDermott Motors building ensures that the building will continue its legacy of adapting to meet the needs of the city.

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Waco enjoyed an unprecedented level of economic prosperity when cotton was king in the early twentieth century. During this period, Waco’s prominent families commissioned residences that would speak to their affluence and elevated station. The Migel House at 1425 Columbus Avenue stands as an impressive architectural reminder of those boom years and the private citizens who sought to create a legacy for themselves through brick and mortar.

When investor Nelson Smith relocated to Waco from nearby Belton, Texas, he commissioned legendary Waco architect Milton W. Scott to build his family home on Columbus Avenue. Completed in 1910, the mansion served as the Smith residence for only a few years before it was sold to Louey Migel. A prominent Wacoan in his own right, Migel was part owner of the Goldstein-Migel department store which was a fixture in Waco retail for many years. The Migel family owned the house until 1969. In the years following, the house functioned as off-campus housing for Baylor University until the Freeman House paid $200,000 to use the residence as the women’s dormitory for its drug rehabilitation program. The Migel House is now privately owned.

The Migel House is a beautiful example of Beaux Arts revival style. Its Doric columns and the urns flanking the front walkway are reminiscent of a Greek temple, while the terra-cotta tiles and scalloped roof recall the architecture of a Spanish mission. The brickwork featuring festoons and cartouches makes this two-story structure one of the most uniquely adorned historic houses in Waco. The exterior of the house has remained largely the same for more than a century.

The driveway is covered by a brick porte cochere. A carriage house, built at the same time as the Migel House, sits in the back corner of the property and echoes the Beaux-Arts style.

The interior of the house has much of its original moulding, pocket doors, hand-painted canvas wallpaper, and stained glass windows. The full basement of this more than 10,000- square-foot home features a wooden bowling lane. Notably, the house survived the great tornado of 1953 that ripped through downtown Waco.

The Migel House remains a testament to a golden age of Waco architecture and the affluence that made such residences possible.  

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Few major products are as closely identified with the people and environment where they began as Dr Pepper in Waco. Developing from a soft drink invented at a local drugstore to one of the largest and most popular industries in the world, Dr Pepper has remained attached to the city of Waco. This close identification with Waco is perhaps best exemplified in the former bottling plant building which now houses a museum on the corner of Fifth Street and Mary Avenue in downtown Waco.

In 1885, one year before the invention of Coca-Cola, a young pharmacist named Charles Alderton began experimenting by mixing different fruit flavors together at The Old Corner Drug Store on Fourth Street and Austin Avenue. The resulting concoction would become the formula for Dr Pepper. The drink became a favorite of fountain patrons, and soon people all across town ordered the drink originally known as a Waco. From around 1885 to 1891, the drink, could only be served at fountains or the drugstore, where the syrup was mixed with the carbonated water and served individually. The popularity of the beverage influenced the drugstore owner and manager, Wade Morrison and Robert S. Lazenby to form the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Co. in 1891 to bottle the drink.

In 1906, a three-story building was built at the corner of Fifth and Mary for the purpose of bottling and shipping the new drink. In 1922, the base of operations moved to Dallas after the formation of the formal Dr Pepper Company. Local bottling production continued until around 1965, when operations were moved to a more modern facility. The building was given to Baylor University and subsequently used as a storage warehouse for the next thirteen years.

On May 11, 1953, an F5 tornado struck downtown Waco, devastating the city. Although it did not sustain a direct hit, the bottling building was among the casualties of the tornado. The tornado damaged the Mary Street side of the building leaving a scar which is still visible today. The relatively sound construction of the bottling building, including 18-inch thick brick walls, massive timber underpinnings, and tile roof, is the reason for the fairly minor damage to the plant. The building was repaired with a lighter colored brick but not restored, and business was back to as usual until the move in 1965.

At Waco’s centennial celebration of the invention of Dr Pepper in 1985, ideas of creating a museum to tell the story of Dr Pepper production in Waco sprang up. On May 11, 1991, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the tornado, the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute opened. Since then, the museum has entertained and educated thousands of visitors, with a mission of being the best museum to tell the story of the soft drink industry and to use this very industry as a testament to the free enterprise system. Complete with exhibit areas, a gift shop, soda fountain, and restored building features, the Dr Pepper Museum helps tell the story of the growth of Dr Pepper and its special place in Waco.

For more information about the museum, visit www.drpeppermuseum.com.  

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Old Waco High School is the oldest of several extant buildings to have housed Waco High School. Initially the school met in two small buildings in downtown Waco during the 1880s, and for many years was the only public school west of the Brazos. The high school was built in 1910, and sits in downtown Waco on Columbus Avenue in close proximity to the courthouse and the ALICO building.

The school quickly became notable in the community. In 1915, all 110 seniors passed their classes and graduated. At their graduation ceremony, the keynote speaker invited them to draw upon the efficiency, industry, and preparedness they had been taught at Waco High, for these “were the qualities by which they would eventually triumph” in life. The athletic program was also successful early on. In 1922, the Waco High Tigers defeated the Abilene Eagles, becoming the Texas State Football Champions.

The racial makeup of Waco High began to change in the 1960s when the Waco Independent School District began implementing racial integration. Prior to integration, African American students attended Jefferson Moore High School. The school board mandated incremental integration beginning with teachers and then students, but only achieved the minimum requirements to meet federal standards.

In 1971, a new structure was built to house Waco High School on North Nineteenth Street. Citizens of Waco offered many suggestions for ways to repurpose Old Waco High. For instance, many wanted the building to be used for special education and neighborhood recreation programs. Some thought it best to simply sell it to the highest bidder. Over the next twenty years, Old Waco High was used to house an alternative school, a special education department, a museum called the Metropolitan Learning Center, and a pregnancy resource center. In 1990, the building was closed to the public and sat empty.

The school board put the building up for sale in 1995. However, the cost of removing asbestos and lead-based paint from the building, nearly ten million dollars, led to buyer after buyer losing interest over the next decade. In 2004, dismayed citizens who did not want to see the historic building destroyed attempted to raise the necessary funds to renovate the building but were unable to find a lead donor to assist in the process.

In 2006, a private developer came along with a proposal to renovate Old Waco High. Rehab Builders proposed to develop the building into loft-style apartments which would be offered to low-income families. In 2008, the sale of Old Waco High was completed after the developer agreed to preserve the historic integrity of the building. Today, each unit of the Historic Lofts of Waco High is different depending on where it exists in the floor plan. For instance, some units contain chalkboards; others might have a basketball goal or game clock.

Old Waco High became deeply woven into city fabric through its dedication to the education of youth in Waco. The school educated generation after generation of Wacoans, creating a legacy that many fought to preserve after the school’s closure. Today, Old Waco High remains an important part of the community through its provision of quality housing to low-income citizens.  

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Temple Rodef Sholom has the distinction of being McLennan County’s oldest and largest Jewish congregation. 

Jewish permanent settlers made Waco their home in the mid-nineteenth century. For many years no organized congregation existed; however, Jewish families did gather together to celebrate Jewish festivals and holy days at worship services held in rented rooms. On November 9, 1873, Eureka Lodge No. 198, International Order of B’nai B’rith (a Jewish service and fraternal organization) was established. Lodge members resolved in 1879 to organize a formal congregation and to raise funds for the construction of a synagogue. Forty families founded the congregation of Rodef Sholom. Among its original leadership were prominent Waco businessmen such as Sam Sanger, of the Sanger Brothers mercantile empire, and Louey Migel, co-founder of the Goldstein-Migel department store. Rodef Sholom dedicated its first synagogue, located at 924 Washington Avenue, on August 10, 1881. By 1908, the growing congregation required a larger space and undertook efforts to replace their current structure with a modern stone temple. Famed local architect Milton W. Scott, responsible for the Dr Pepper building and First Baptist Church in Waco, designed the second synagogue. Completed in 1910, the second temple served the congregation until 1961, when once again spatial concerns necessitated the construction of a new synagogue.

Located near the intersection of Forty-First Street and Colcord Avenue, the current Temple Rodef Sholom is one of Waco’s most striking places of worship. Not unlike a towering tent, the sanctuary recalls the Biblical ohel moed (tent of meeting) in which Israel worshipped during the wilderness sojourn. The roof is sloped in such a manner that it reminds congregants of the kanfe ha-schechina (sheltering wings of God’s presence), a reoccurring theme in Jewish sacred lore. Even the temple’s roof shingles carry added meaning as they were fashioned to resemble the traditional shingle form used by Eastern European synagogues destroyed during the Holocaust. The southeast wall features a menorah (branched lampstand) as a soaring bas relief. Affixed to the main doors are twelve copper plates bearing the names and emblems of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The sanctuary is designed around the aron hakodesh (holy ark), a closed recess in which the Torah scrolls rest. Regarded as the holiest space of the synagogue, Rodef Sholom’s aron is elaborately ornamented. The doors of the aron feature six pairs of panels. Each pair of panels depicts holy images or symbols central to the Torah. At the height of the aron is the ner tamid (eternal light). Continuously lit, it symbolizes God’s living presence and the permanence of moral law. Just below the ner tamid stands a reproduction of the two tablets of the Ten Commandments given to Moses at Mount Sinai.

 The Religious School area is structured to resemble a magen david (shield of David), a six-pointed star. This design recurs in the glass-enclosed Memorial Fountain area, with a bronze memorial tablet on the east wall.

A voluntary association of Jews committed to Liberal (Reform) Judaism, Rodef Sholom’s history is marked by a high level of community involvement and efforts towards ecumenism. Most of this civic engagement occurred at the lay (congregational) level. Member Issac A. Goldstein, concerned that many citizens did not have sufficient funds to purchase books in the late 1800s, established Waco’s first circulating library in the Goldstein-Migel store. He went on to serve as president of the Public Library Association of Waco from 1900 to 1920. Louey Migel made large financial contributions not only to charities related to Waco’s Jewish community but the YMCA, the YWCA, and the Red Cross. He was also a founding member of the Waco Working Boy’s Club. In the past thirty years, Rodef Sholom has been an active member of the Greater Waco Interfaith Conference, an organization designed to promote understanding and cooperation among the variety of faith traditions in Waco.

Women have always played important roles in Rodef Sholom’s congregational life. The Temple Sisterhood, founded in the early 1920s, has been charged with organizing service and cultural programs and financing the temple’s Religious School. In 2012, Rabbi Laura Schwartz Harari became the first woman rabbi to serve Temple Rodef Sholom.

Rodef Sholom is Hebrew for “pursuing peace” and it would seem that the civic-minded congregation has lived up to this title through service projects and participation in ecumenical efforts designed to bring together Waco’s greater community of faith.

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