Archival Maps

At the same time I was writing my thesis at graduate school in 2018, I had the opportunity to pour over several Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of North Texas during the early decades of the twentieth-century. Using the skillset I had acquired from a cartography class, I gradually pieced the puzzle together and discovered new knowledge about the rapid growth and development of schools and communities of North Texas between 1900-1930. Below, I have written a brief history of the College of Industrial Arts (now commonly known as Texas Woman’s University) in Denton using maps of the era. Note in the maps how the development of Denton changes at the same time the school campus expanded and student enrollment grew to new heights.

Denton’s female student population steadily increased after September 1903 when Texas’ first state-funded woman’s college, the Texas Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls of the State of Texas in Arts and Science- the College of Industrial Arts for this essay’s namesake- was narrowly approved by politicians in the Texas Legislative (established by one vote) and opened its doors to great applause. The institution, which was an ambitious project conceived from the persistent campaigning efforts of Helen M. Stoddard and other Texas Women’s Christian Temperance Union reformers, was an academy “of broad culture and wide opportunities… [that] thoroughly prepared for woman’s work in the industrial and commercial world.” The curriculum included challenging classes in music, education, social sciences, and home economics. The college’s inaugural President, Cree T. Work once said the school allowed “women to enter other suitable occupations other than home keeping if they so desired.” In sum, progressivism had struck the heart of Denton’s education system as the College of Industrial Arts gave young women equal academic opportunities as men. Since the success of the city’s teaching college, Denton civilians were excited to welcome another academic establishment in their community and parceled seventy acres of land to the CIA Board of Regents. The town’s men also dug a six-inch artisan well on the grounds to guarantee a water supply. In the first year of classes, the College of Industrial Arts had fourteen faculty members and one-hundred and thirty students, a majority from Texas and Louisiana. The premises on Oakland Avenue is depicted in a 1907 Sanborn map, Figure 1.1.  The three-story building of pressed brick and trimmed with white limestone was a neo-classical composition designed by Texas architect W.C. Dodson. The structure, which was nicknamed “Old Main,” housed classrooms, biological sciences laboratories, offices, boiler rooms, and an auditorium. Like other schools of the era, the College of Industrial Arts was at first a stranger to the city of thirty-thousand civilians and located within an undeveloped area, illustrated in a separate grid on the map.

Francis Marion Bralley, a former superintendent for public schools in Fannin and Lamar counties, assumed the Presidency of the College of Industrial Arts in September 1914 and quickly diverted his administrative energies to increase the school’s services and enrollment. With the assistance of the Regents, the president expanded the curriculum to include liberal arts studies, an art department, and summer sessions. As depicted in a 1921 Sanborn map, Figure 1.2, the campus flourished since 1903 and now included a Household Arts & Science building, several small music studios, a greenhouse, and extensions to the Administration Building (this space was utilized by the home economics faculty). To address the inadequate number of beds for the student body, which was shy of two-thousand students in 1921, the school built two unpopular dormitories to the north of “Old Main,” Brackenridge Hall and Stoddard Hall. Since more international students from Scotland, Canada, and Mexico became attracted to the scholastic reputation at the college, Bralley actively campaigned for the construction of two pristine residence halls in 1920. Sallie B. Capps and Lowry Hall dormitories, named after two committed Regents and illustrated in the northwest corner of campus, became comfortable homes to many pupils. Furthermore, student life matured as more female scholars resided on the campus. The school’s first newspaper, Lass-O, was initiated in November 1914, and the M. Eleanor Breckenridge and Chaparral Clubs, two literary societies, were organized in the late 1910s. The state legislature awarded $85,000 to the college for the erection of a gymnasium, which was completed in 1821 (shown in the northeast corner of the complex on the map), and housed equipment and lockers for fitness classes and a heated swimming pool. A three-thousand seat auditorium would be constructed next to the gymnasium the following year. Many residences and boarding houses opposite the college, on Oakland Avenue and Carrier Street are portrayed in a once-nonexistent neighborhood in Figure 1.2. Moreover, the map draws a lot of open space on the CIA grounds, foreshadowing the proliferation in the college’s premises and student body in the late 1920s. And when the college grew, more homes would sprout in all directions.

Figure 1.1– West Denton in 1907- note that the College of Industrial Arts’s “Old Main” is in the upper top-left of the map, away from the bustle of the growing city. Denton 1907 Sheet 15, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps- Texas (1877-1926), Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, The University of Texas at Austin.

Figure 1.2: West Denton in 1921- the college now has a map of its own as the campus expanded in acreage in the early twentieth-century and student enrollment also soared to new heights. Note the new paved roads, residences, and boarding houses that have been erected around the campus. My thesis subject, Sallie Capps is also recognized in this map as a dormitory named in her honor is present on the west side of campus- many female and male students would call this welcoming building their “home” until the 1980s. Denton 1921 Sheet 15, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps- Texas (1877-1926), Perry- Castañeda Library Map Collection, The University of Texas at Austin.

 

Sources:

Joyce Thompson, Marking A Trail: A History of the Texas Woman’s University (Denton: Texas Woman’s University Press, 1982), 1-8, 39-40, 43-4, 46-9.

Hugh Hawkins, “The Making of the Liberal Arts College Identity,” Daedalus 128 (1999): 4-5.

Sallie B. Capps, GA 197, 2, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library.