Sanger Brothers department stores were often described as the pioneer retail stores of Texas. Yet these successful mercantile ventures arose from humble beginnings. Between 1852 and 1874, five of the seven Sanger brothers immigrated to America from Germany to pursue greater entrepreneurial opportunities. Although the brothers initially separated and spread throughout the country, they slowly came back together in the years following the Civil War to join the dry goods business that Isaac, the eldest brother, operated from a storefront in McKinney. As more brothers joined the business, it slowly expanded along the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, opening stores in cities such as Millican, Decatur, Bryan, Dallas, and eventually Waco.

Sam Sanger traveled to the United States in 1866 and lived in the Northeast for several years serving as a rabbi and a teacher. In 1872, he opened a small shoe store in New York, but closed it the following year when Isaac summoned him to Texas in order to open their newest location. On March 4, 1873, Sam opened Sanger Brothers in the heart of downtown Waco on the square between Austin Avenue and Bankers’ Alley.

The new enterprise started out small, with just $1,300 worth of stock and only two employed clerks at its opening. Despite this, the business still carried a variety of goods. The Waco Daily Examiner ran a full-page advertisement listing the items which could be found at Sanger Brothers, including “dry goods, clothing, boots, shoes, hats, caps, gents’ furnishing goods, carpets, oil cloths,” and more. By 1876, business expanded beyond the capacity of the small shop, and Sam Sanger purchased a new, larger building on Austin Avenue between Fourth Street and Fifth Street. That same year, all of the branches of the Sanger Brothers franchise closed, except for the two most successful locations in Waco and Dallas.

Despite the closures, the success and expansion of the Waco Sanger Brothers store continued. In 1882,Sanger purchased another building on Austin Avenue and began to rent out the old Waco Opera House and warehouse in order to open a wholesale department. Sanger Brothers continued to develop their reputation in Waco based upon providing the best selection of goods in town and a dedication to meeting customer needs in any situation.

News of the onset of World War I and the decline of the cotton market in 1915 provided the first hint of trouble for the Waco department store. Farmers who purchased goods on credit from the wholesale department were increasingly no longer able to pay their bill. But business boomed during the actual war as industry production increased throughout the country, and on December 17, 1918, Sanger Brothers incorporated.

The store received a second and more serious indication of trouble on December 18, 1919, when Sam Sanger died. His charismatic leadership of the company contributed greatly to its success, and none of the other executives were prepared to take over. Although his son, Asher Sanger, took over leadership, the company sustained fiscal losses between 1918 and 1926, when it was then sold to a Saint Louis firm. Unable to recover from these losses, and hit hard by the Great Depression, Sanger Brothers finally closed its doors on March 15, 1931. In its announcement of Sanger Brothers’s closure, the Waco Tribune-Herald noted the dismay of many Wacoans at the loss of this institution, stating that thousands were expected to show up for the sales during the store’s final days.

For over half a century, Sanger Brothers served as a highly successful venture in the heart of downtown because of its commitment to variety and quality in merchandise, as well as excellence in customer service.

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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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When Stephen F. Austin led the first Anglo-American settlers into Texas including areas along the Brazos River, they brought with them their strong agricultural tradition based on cotton-growing. From the period of annexation until well into the first few decades of the twentieth century, King Cotton retained its sovereignty over the agricultural landscape of the Lone Star State. In an effort to recognize the importance of this cash crop to its livelihood, Waco stylized itself as the Cotton Capital of the South, and its leading citizens organized an exhibition intended to celebrate the end of the growing season and cotton’s central role in the state’s economy.

The first exposition of the Texas Cotton Palace was held in November of 1894. The activities lasted a month, and it seemed that the Cotton Palace would become a permanent yearly fixture in Waco’s social calendar. Unfortunately, tragedy soon struck. In January of 1895, just a few months after the first celebration, a terrible fire damaged the Cotton Palace. The exhibition hall at Padgitt Park burned down, and the rest of the grounds were left badly damaged. The Texas Cotton Palace would not see further festivities for fifteen years.

The Cotton Palace reopened in 1910. The 1910 exposition was housed on a triangular-shaped twelve-acre lot surrounded by Clay Avenue, Dutton Avenue, and South Sixteenth Street. The Cotton Palace’s facilities were designed to be both eye-catching and practical. The main building had a central dome done in a striking palatial style, and the coliseum was capable of seating ten thousand people. The grounds featured automobile, poultry, floral, and machinery buildings with diverse exhibits. These permanent buildings were augmented by a racetrack, barns, and carnival grounds known as the War Path that included a Ferris wheel and a wooden roller coaster.

Cotton Palace organizers desired to provide entertainment that would appeal to people of varied age groups and backgrounds. Activities at the two-week-long exposition at the Cotton Palace included better baby contests, horse and automobile races, as well as canning, baking, and needlework competitions. Among the exhibits were farm products and manufactured goods from across Texas and neighboring states. In order to draw in more crowds, forty acres of park space and an athletic field with an eighteen thousand seat capacity were added to the original grounds. Perhaps the major events of the exposition were the coronation of the Cotton Palace Queen at the Cotton Palace Ball, a lavish gala attended by dignitaries and debutantes alike.

  The Cotton Palace had a role on the home front during World War I, devoting several buildings to the war effort. For instance, one building was used to display a captured German biplane, along with other items of weaponry and equipment such as artillery pieces and shells. A record number of 547,242 people attended the exposition in 1918, although this record was likely due more to the patronage of personnel from Camp MacArthur than the appeal of war-themed attractions.

Twenty years after the reopening of the Texas Cotton Palace, the exposition came to an end for good in 1930 upon the decline of the cotton market and the economic crisis brought on by the Great Depression. In the early 1970s, however, the Waco Cotton Palace Pageant was created to keep the tradition alive.

The Texas Cotton Palace was very much one of the major landmarks and attractions for not only Waco but also for the Lone Star State. This two-week-long exposition provided a memorable experience for pleasure seekers and the subjects of King Cotton alike.

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