Meticulous and exacting, prolific Waco architect Milton W. Scott crafted a legacy throughout the city that has withstood the test of time. Today, his historic buildings stand as hallmark pieces of Waco’s rich history.
Born in New Orleans on August 23, 1872, Milton William Wallace Scott came from a long line of Scottish engineers, inventors, and builders. When his family moved to Waco following his father’s death in 1883, Scott found work as an apprentice carpenter at the age of eleven in order to support his widowed mother and three sisters. Although he never received a formal college education, Scott loved to read and study, and after his mother remarried, he began to work as a draftsman for his stepfather John P. Powers.
Scott left his stepfather’s business in 1906 when he began to collaborate with Glenn Allen on the design of First Baptist Church of Waco. At that same time, the pair also began to draw up plans for the construction of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Plant (now, the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute). In 1907, he began working with noted Waco architect Roy E. Lane to design various private homes as well as the Rotan Grocery Company and the Brazos Investment Company.
As his reputation throughout the city grew, Scott received additional jobs which would cement his reputation as a Waco icon. In 1910, he partnered with T. Brooks Pearson on the design of Waco High, an elaborate three-storied project costing $140,000 (over $3 million in 2015) at its completion in 1913. During that extensive project, Scott met and married Ivy Eugenia Thompson Haythornwhite. The couple later had two children. By 1916, the couple purchased a family home at 617 North Fourth Street (as indicated on the Waco History map), and Scott designed and built a cluster of cottages and apartments around the home to rent out. Following 1913, Scott left his partners and branched out into his own work, though he sometimes employed associates and draftsmen to help with the workload.
Scott’s meticulous nature produced impressive architectural structures, but also frustrated many contractors. After his death, his son noted that Scott thought it was as his duty, as the on-site representative of the building’s owners, to oversee each detail of the construction process. Although his exacting demands may have produced some irritation, the results were unquestionable, as evidenced by the durability and strength of his designs. For instance, Scott designed many of the surviving multistory buildings of the 1953 tornado which devastated much of downtown Waco.
Scott’s work consumed his life. He took only two vacations during the last fifteen years before his death and worked tirelessly to ensure the quality and craftsmanship of his buildings. He designed buildings for various groups throughout the city, including eighteen public school buildings, portions of the Waco Methodist Home, Temple Rodef Shalom, and various buildings on the campuses of Baylor University and Texas A&M.
Though he had become well known throughout Waco and Central Texas, Scott scrambled for jobs after the Depression hit. He had been working to design an apartment complex as a personal project, but he lost most of his savings in the economic downturn. He struggled to find architecture commissions, and financial hardships compounded upon pre-existing health problems. He passed away in 1933.
Though some of Scott’s iconic work was torn down or destroyed during urban renewal in the 1960s, many of the buildings he designed still stand today. Structures such as Waco High and the Roosevelt Hotel convey this city’s great history while serving as reminders of Scott’s incredible work and lasting legacy.
]]>Since 1894, the Methodist Children’s Home has provided a home and family for needy children in Central Texas. Though its role in the community has changed over the years, its devotion to helping the most vulnerable in society has remained constant.
In the late nineteenth century, Methodist Bishop Joseph S. Key saw the profound need for an institution to care for the plight of orphans in Texas. He enlisted the help of Dr. Horace Bishop, the pastor of Waco’s First Methodist Church, and drew up plans to present at the Northwest Texas Methodist Conference in Abilene. In November of 1890, the conference unanimously voted for the creation of an orphanage, proclaiming that “practical religion cares for the helpless.”
A Methodist committee met in 1893 to determine a suitable location for the home and elected Waco after the city donated a ten-acre estate, including a sixteen-room residence. Dr. W. H. Vaughn, the first superintendent of the home, and his wife Pauline, moved in at the beginning of 1894. By the end of that year, twenty-six children lived at the Northwest Texas Conference Orphans Home.
The home’s primary source of support during its early years came from special offerings collected at Christmas by the five regional Texas Methodist conferences. Despite the generosity of the congregations, these funds did not fully support the rapidly growing orphanage. By the end of 1895, forty-three children resided at the facility and homes in the local community cared for twenty-one others. Moved by the orphanage’s important work and financial struggles, Methodist evangelists Abe and Louisa Mulkey pledged the proceeds from one night of each of their revivals to the home. This money funded the construction of an administration building in 1899, and in 1901, leaders dedicated the new building and the remainder of the orphanage at an official ceremony. When the Vaughns left the home in 1905, the debt-free institution resided upon 28 acres of land supported by a 173-acre farm on the Bosque River.
The orphanage continued to thrive and develop over the next several decades. New directors changed the home’s fundraising methods, inviting Methodists to contribute to the welfare of the orphans year-round. Individuals’s contributions soon became the largest form of support for the orphanage. Decreased funding brought by the Great Depression hit the orphanage hard. To make ends meet, director W. F. Barnett cut staff and used his own salary to fund the institution. The economic hardship eased some in 1934 when philanthropist Joe J. Perkins became a large donor to the home after meeting several of the children residing there.
During the early twentieth century, the Mulkeys’ support allowed the orphanage to construct additional buildings, such as a dining hall and a few dormitories, to meet the needs of the growing orphanage. Dr. Hubert Johnson later changed from the dormitory model to provide a more homelike atmosphere for the children residing at the orphanage. Between 1938 and 1952, small numbers of children were moved into cottage-style homes under the care of a houseparent. Around this same time, the children began to attend local schools such as Waco High and A. J. Moore High School, rather than classes taught at the Methodist Orphanage.
The home’s role shifted with the new social trends of the 1950s. More children were arriving at the home due to divorce, mental illness, or physical abuse than as orphans, and the staff and organization of the home evolved to meet these needs. It was in this period that the institution’s name changed one final time to the Methodist Children’s Home. The facility became increasingly known for developing programs for foster-home placement and family rehabilitation. In 1971, the home established a ranch ten miles east of Waco for troubled teenage boys to build a solid foundation for their lives through education and leadership opportunities.
The Methodist Children’s Home celebrated its centennial in 1990, having sheltered more than seventeen thousand children in Central Texas in its long and storied history.
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