The third and final part of exploring the constantly-changing physical plant of Austin College in Sherman, TX. The college, which was once described as “a dark gothic hulk in the middle of a weed field,” is now a beautiful home to 1,350 students, 150 faculty & staff, and promptly located near the downtown of one of North Texas’s largest cities. It’s history is rich and complies to the story of Texas, a state whose fields of education are continuously growing among different communities. As the college’s student population exploded in the early decades of the twentieth century, houses and other buildings sprouted along Grand Avenue, College Street, and Brockett Street. Though many of these buildings are gone, their history on Grand Avenue and College Street still exists.
South Side of Campus
The Togo House was previously owned by Confederate veteran Captain J.M. Thompson (who helped found a military school on the outskirts of town in the 1870s with Captain John Tellier), and was a present to the college in 1903. Located on the south side of campus, now along E. College Street, the large house provided cheap accommodations for students for a relatively short time before it burned to the ground on April 27, 1910. Thompson and his family would later live in the Thompson House, a residence that has since been home to the college’s education department.
Cashion Field, a twenty-acre grassy tract of grassy adjourning the campus, was purchased in 1922 by several members of the Alumni Association. The college abandoned Luckett Field and used this plot for the budding athletic program. The plot was named in honor of Mason Cashion, the secretary of the campus’s YMCA who had also served as Austin College’s athletic director during the first decade of the twentieth century. Cashion Field was located on the southeast corner of present-day E. College and Bledsoe Streets.
The college’s first gymnasium was built on the Cashion Field in 1927. The facility was named for Pete Cawthon, the college’s football coach who inspired his athletes to help build it. The gym was popular among male students, athletic and non-athletics, and housed a full-sized basketball court. The female students continued to use the small gym in the Y building. (photograph below is the interior of Cawthon Gym).
The college’s first music hall was a white frame facility built east of the Cawthon Gym and housed the popular music department until Craig Hall was built in 1962. Today, Craig Hall houses the college’s music department and several classrooms. I regularly visited Craig Hall during my undergraduate tenure at Austin College because I was once part of the A Capella Choir. (photograph below shows the white framed music building north of the Caruth Administration building).
The first dormitory for women on campus, Coffin Hall, was ceremoniously erected in 1949 for Austin College’s centennial. Coffin Hall was built during the aftermath of World War II when many male and female students returned to the college after their efforts in the war. In 1999, the Wright Campus Center replaced Coffin Hall.
On Lee and E. Brockett Streets, two blocks south of the campus, stood Lee House. This small facility was a local boarding house for Sherman residents and was eventually acquired by the college for student use until it’s demolition in the 1970s.
The Vet Village was constructed on the southwest sector of the campus in the 1940s. A flood of returning World War II veterans and factory workers engulfed the campus in 1946. The college negotiated a contract with the government to build fifty housing units for the veterans on the south and west sides of Cashion Field and on the north side of E. Brockett Street. The village also housed classrooms.
In 1955, the Vet Village underwent an intensive renovation. Three two-story units were added to the main facility (built with new fire-proof material). Two smaller units attached to the east and west wings, forming a quadrangle. The interior of the buildings were refurbished and equipped the modern furniture of that era. The exterior area was landscaped and furnished with yard equipment–photographs of this area of campus were used in promotional flyers. The sixteen apartments in the complex became popular among new students (especially married couples), forcing the college to create a waiting list. On Pacific Street, south of these units, smaller single apartments were constructed in an effort to deal with the Vet Village overflow.
**It’s been a couple of years since I have set foot on the Austin College campus. I know that the campus’s physical plant will continuously change as I age into a grayer man. Building will be demolished while newer academic and residential facilities will be constructed to combat the growing student population. Exterior landscapes will continue to wither, die, and regrow due to weather and human expansion. I am excited to see the evolution of Texas’s oldest college configure before my eyes, and will be anticipating big changes to the college by the time I celebrate the 50th anniversary of my B.A. graduation in 2066.
***Photographs found in Austin College Abell Library Special Collections.
***Information found in Light Townsend Cummins’s two books on Austin College.
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