Focus Magazine | Fall 2016

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A Baylor University Student Publication | Fall 2016

letter from the

EDITORS

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Founded in 1849, Waco takes its name from the indigenous "Huaco" peoples who lived along the Brazos River. The decades have brought booms and busts to the city, which now resembles a patchwork of the historic and the new. Waco is a city that has carried its history into the present. The storied buildings downtown testify to the city’s history and commitment to preserving the past. Waco may not be the largest city in Texas, but its history is filled with stories worth telling and passing down, even into this century. With this edition of Focus Magazine, we tried to build a collection of stories that we thought capture the city and its past. Having both lived here for only a few years, we’ve witnessed the city’s recent attempts to reinvent itself while still keeping elements of bygone eras. We hope that these pages reveal a city that is both modern and old, while also telling some of Waco’s stories that are very much lost in the past.

Sincerely,

CONTENTS

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Marcus Maurer Rachel Leland

2016 photo by Josiah Beck 1950s photo courtesy of Baylor's Texas Collection Cover art created by Josiah Beck Editors photo by Tim Hong

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Coffee Culture

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Moving Forward

8

Legacy of a Lynching

10

Treasure Seekers

14

Fixing a Food Desert

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The Gospel Truth

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Living in the Past

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Cold as Ice

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Happy Hippodrome

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John Isaacson

COFFEE CULTURE

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s Waco’s community continues to grow, many new developments have begun to brew. None are more noticeable than the recently opened coffee shops in the downtown district.

“It has its own little world. We have our own celebrities, and camps and conventions that are not completely seen by the common consumer,” said Cody Ferguson, chief coffee officer of Dichotomy Coffee & Spirits.

Dichotomy, which opened a shop in Croft Art Gallery in October 2013, originally started to serve coffee at the Waco Downtown Famers Market in April 2012, and was one of the very first specialty coffee establishments in Waco.

“We took a risk not offering syrups or nonfat milk or any of the things that people really considered popular in coffee, but it went over really well,” Ferguson said. “We tried to educate people that this. . . is what it is and it’s something kind of different.”

Waco has come a long way over the four years since two roasting companies were introduced into the coffee community.

“Waco in the last four years has become a place where you can actually get a decent cup of coffee,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson said in the coffee community, all of the smaller shops aren’t necessarily competing with each other as much as they are with the large chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts.

“I want it to be really enjoyable. I want it to be unique,” Ferguson said. “If you are changing someone’s taste, you aren’t really pulling business away from anybody except for those people, who in my opinion destroy coffee.”

Ferguson mentioned Pinewood Coffee, which recently opened inside Alpha Omega, a grill and bakery located at 929 Franklin Avenue. He doesn’t necessarily view it as a competitor as much as business run by fellow coffee lovers.

“Yes, I would love to bring more business to Dichotomy, but I think that is going to be done through other shops opening,” Ferguson said.

“It doesn’t just have to be us.”

By Natalie Burch

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RIGHT A Dichotomy employee hand crafts a cappuccino for a customer at the bar. All drinks are embellished with house-made vanilla syrup and local milk.

MIDDLE While attending to customers at the coffee bar, a dichotomy employee adds a finishing touch to a housemade drink. In addition to serving coffee, Dichotomy functions as a full-service bar with a focus on serving spirits and drinks that marry coffee and cocktails.

The history behind the relationship between Dichotomy and Pinewood is storied. Dylan Washington, one of the owners from Pinewood Roasters, shared how the relationship between Dichotomy and Pinewood began.

Washington, Brett Jameson, one of Dichotomy's co-owners, and five other men who are now key employees, all worked at the Starbucks located at the Central Texas Marketplace.

“So six people total all worked at that Starbucks at the same time and it was a time of super mental fermentation,” Washington said. “We discovered Intelligentsia and PT’s, all these roasters who were doing all these different things.”

Washington talked about how the six of them would brew Intelligentsia, an artisan coffee brand based out of Chicago, to serve to the customers instead of the Starbucks coffee they thought they ordered.

“You know, it was kind of like an underground movement,” Washington said.

After working at the Starbucks together, all of them talked about opening their own shops and starting to roast their own coffee beans, and bringing their product to Waco.

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"You'll see it, you'll smell it, and you can get good coffee."

Photos by Emily Hicks

Washington started roasting beans in a skillet as a hobby in college. He built a roaster out of a barbecue grill with his grandpa and started to sell roasted beans to all his neighbors.

“That was my freshman year at Baylor and from that point on I was like, ‘I’m going to start a coffee roaster when I graduate,’” Washington said. “I met [business partner] J.D. Beard my senior year at Common Grounds. He and I both worked there all through college. Then we were like, ‘Yo, let’s do this.’”

Three months ago the pair established the Pinewood Coffee shop in Alpha Omega. Washington said they had the opportunity to open it because he had waited tables at 1424 Bistro, another restaurant owned by the owners of Alpha Omega. The owners of Alpha Omega approached him with the idea of establishing a coffee shop inside the restaurant. “[They] knew I was roasting, I had my own business, and I was trying to make it,” Washington said. “We agreed and came in and designed that corner and as you can see it’s completely different than the rest of the place.”

Washington said that their shop inside Alpha Omega is only temporary. They have been searching for the right building to establish a stand-alone coffee shop downtown sometime within the next year.

“We had the opportunity to be downtown and serve coffee and we didn’t really care what that looked like because it’s temporary,” Washington said of the space they rent.

Washington said that in less than a year they will open their own shop with a roaster, good seating and good Wi-Fi. “You’ll see it, you’ll smell it, and you can get good coffee,” Washington said.

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MOVING

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FORWARD Waco streets and locations transform as time marches on Photos & Art by Josiah Beck | Historic photos courtesy of Baylor's Texas Collection

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Constructed in 1914 as a vaudeville theater, the Waco Hippodrome is the oldest standing entertainment venue in town.

With the addition of businesses such as The Palladium, Portofino's Italian Restaurant and Cafe Cappuccino, the past few years has witnessed a rebirth of the once popular Austin Avenue.

Texas supermarket H-E-B formerly inhabited this Austin Avenue location, but now the building houses Sedberry Furniture.

Built in 1910, the ALICO building is one of the oldest skyscrapers in Texas. The neon-red ALICO sign glows brightly in the night and is considered an iconic part of the Waco skyline.

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Courtesy of Baylor's Texas Collection

Outside of the McLennan County Courthouse, a mob surrounds the lifeless body of Jesse Washington.

Legacy of a

LYNCHING The aftermath of a tragedy still lives in Waco today

By Pablo Gonzalez

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As dawn broke in the sleepy town of Waco, a 17-year-old Jesse Washington sat alone in the McLennan County judge’s office awaiting his trial for allegedly murdering Lucy Fryer, the wife of his supervisor in Robinson, a Waco suburb.

A 1916 report in Crisis, the NAACP’s official magazine, presents the grisly details.

As a farmhand on the Fryer farm, Washington was responsible for plowing the fields and sowing seeds. He worked tirelessly to do his best so that he could bring money home to his family who lived in a cabin on the property.

On the evening of May 8, 1916, Washington was out working in the cotton fields when he went into the Fryer home for some more cottonseeds. George Fryer was out in the fields working with his children. When Washington entered the house, Lucy Fryer reprimanded him for beating

the mules in the field. He knocked her down and hit her with a blacksmith’s hammer. To avoid suspicion, he hid and abandoned the body and returned to his work, according to the Crisis report.

When the body was discovered, Washington was immediately named the first suspect. He was arrested and taken to the local jail in Waco. He was moved when word of a town mob from Robinson formed and they were looking for Robinson to torment him. He was moved from county jail to county jail for protection. While in custody, he confessed to killing Mrs. Fryer. He was even moved to Dallas for holding in the Dallas County Jail. It wasn’t until midnight on Monday, May 15 that Washington would be transported back to Waco for his trial.

Washington was escorted down the long marble hallway

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toward the courtroom. Fifteen hundred people were stuffed into the room, which was built to accommodate 500 people, according to the Crisis report.

The trial did not last long. There were so many people packed into the old courtroom that the jury could barely get in and out of their seats. In fact, one of the jurors was a convicted murder whose sentence was suspended in time for him to serve as a juror for this trial. Conveniently, a space was made for exit through a peculiar back door that led to the back alley behind the courthouse. Without any evidence, at approximately 11:22 a.m., the jury announced that they found Washington guilty of all charges.

Suddenly, the crowd charged Washington and tackled him. NAACP reporter Elisabeth Freeman conveys Washington’s final hours in depth. A chain was placed round his neck. He was stripped of his clothes and dragged out of the courtroom through the back door and into the street. “The big fellow took the chain of the Negro under the cover of the crowd and wound it around his own wrist, so that the crowd jerking at the chain was jerking at the man’s wrist and he was holding the boy,” Freeman reported. “The boy shrieked and struggled.” He was dragged through downtown Waco; his skin was slowly scraped off of his torpid body as he was tossed on the cobblestone streets. He was led to the square outside the City Hall and taken to a large tree where his chain was tied. There a roaring fire sat at the base of the tree. His body was dipped countless times into the fire by the mob. He was stabbed. He was beaten. By the end, he was nothing more than a charred corpse.

In the distance, the towers of Old Main and Burleson Hall at Baylor University stood alone in the skyline while pieces

of his body were sold and his remains left on display. His lifeless body swung to and fro in the Central Texas wind.

For some, Waco serves as a reminder that there is indeed hatred that looms in the shadows and is taught from generation to generation. For Mary Pearson, whose grandmother was Washington’s cousin, Waco still reminds her of the tragedy that her family endured.

“When I think about how that young man was treated, I have moved beyond being angry. It depresses me,” Pearson said. “No human being should be treated in that way regardless of what they have done. But when I talk about what happened to my cousin, I find healing and restoration.”

Pearson lives in Robinson and has lived in the greater Waco area all of her life. While attending segregated schools, Pearson saw first-hand the ramifications of bigotry and hatred on a community.

Pearson recalls living in the Jim Crow era, walking into drugstores with her friends and being denied service.

She can recall hearing the stories of Washington from her grandmother. The children in the family grew up in the

Courtesy of McLennan County District Clerk's Office

RIGHT On May 15, 1916 a crowd of spectators gather outside of the McLennan County Courthouse to view the corpse of Washington.

ABOVE RIGHT The front and back pages of Washington's indictment documents reveal the opinion of the grand jury.

OPPOSITE PAGE Jesse Washington's cousin, Mary Pearson displays framed portions of Washington's biography.

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Courtesy of Baylor's Texas Collection

shadow of the stories of Washington and were taught that what happened to him could easily happen to them.

“I want to take something bad and turn it into something good,” Pearson said.

As Waco grows, city and community leaders have worked together to make others aware of the horror that was done.

In the McLennan County Courthouse, a mural on the ground floor tells a visual history of Waco. One of the panels of the mural depicts a tree with a noose.

As controversial as it seems, the city of Waco has issued a public proclamation addressing the history of lynching in McLennan County. The city is ashamed of its past, but they leave the mural on display to serve as a reminder of the impact that racial violence has had on the culture and history of McLennan County.

“It had to take the story of Jesse Washington for attention to be brought toward the issue,” Pearson said.

The history and legacy of stories like Washington's are felt throughout the city of Waco. These stories of Waco in a different time serve to remind the city of its past.

"I have been reluctant to talk about the story, but I want

Rachel Leland

to prove that Waco could be better," Pearson said. "Everyone needs to know what Jesse faced is still an issue today.”

The same streets that Washington was dragged onto remain marked with the stamp of time. The city of Waco has taken steps to recognize the legacy of lynchings, but many feel that much more could be done. For example, the McLennan County Historical Commission voted in February 2016 to establish a historical marker commemorating Washington’s lynching.

"The tree he was hung on still stands in Heritage Square," Pearson said. "People walk by it every day without knowing what happened."

With the growth of Waco and Central Texas, civic leaders and civilians alike have worked to continue to bring light to the history and legacy of lynchings and other acts of injustice. Pearson hopes that by telling her family’s story, the next generation will learn from the mistakes of the past.

“I will continue to share this story to anyone who listens,” Pearson said. “My family will pass this story down as a legacy of what was and still is, and one day, justice will fall like rain.”

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treasure SEEKERS Waco citizens come together to find beauty in broken

For two years, Repurpose with a Purpose has raised money for the Waco Salvation Army by enlisting local artists to transform something old into something new and selling the results. The finished products range from guitars made of broken wood to yard art crafted from old rakes.

"The idea is that you take something that's just nothing or old or ruined and recreate it," Salvation Army major and event organizer Anita Caldwell said.

While the goal is to raise money, it is also representative of the mission of the Salvation Army.

"The Salvation Army wants to help people on their journey to success," Caldwell said. "They work to repurpose their lives which were broken." by Corrie Coleman

TOP A lamp crafted from a refurbished fan shines bright.

MIDDLE LEFT Christie Proctor, the founder of Repurpose with a Purpose, examines the creations submitted for the annual auction. MIDDLE RIGHT A painted face crafted from gardening tools was just one of the items sold. ABOVE Attendees browse the selection of goods available for purchase.

Tickets to the event were $50 a piece or $80 a pair. RIGHT Yellow-painted scissors act as the mouth for a crafted bird as individuals shop.

Photos by Corrie Coleman

See more photos online at

LEFT A local artist holds his creation in the middle of the auction room.

The artist crafted the hanging creation out of metal objects he found in his backyard. ABOVE The items were sold through a silent auction process where attendees could place bids on how valuable they perceived the items to be.

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By Emily Hicks

FOOD

Mission Waco works to combat hunger in Waco's low-income neighborhoods

FIX

MIDDLE Construction workers cut through the former Safeway grocery store sidewalks. The decision to turn the former convenience store into a grocery store was the result of a community vote where 80 percent of participating residents preferred the addition of a grocery store.

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overty is something America has struggled with indefinitely. With 43.1 million people in poverty, the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that about 23.5 million of those Americans live in food deserts. The USDA defines a food desert as a low-access community of at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract's population that reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles).

Waco has an estimated four food deserts that span several zip codes, but people like Jimmy Dorrell, executive director of Christian nonprofit organization Mission Waco, want to change that.

Mission Waco was built around three goals: empowerment, mobilization and social justice. Finance Director Bruce Brown said the organization's push for the future is "based on Mission Waco’s Christian community

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Photos by Natalie Burch

development model, Isaiah 58 and 61, which believes part of God’s calling for His followers is to 'restore and rebuild the streets and dwellings.’"

The now 23-year-old ministry continued its efforts by renovating an old building at North 15th Street and Colcord Avenue in with plans to turn it into a nonprofit grocery store, The Jubilee Food Market. With over 44.26 percent of Jubilee Food Market residents living in poverty, this specific location would prevent residents from traveling over 2 miles to the nearest food store, the H-E-B at Park Lake Drive and North 19th Street.

"The Jubilee Food Market was formerly a predatory convenience store that sold bread for more than twice the grocery store cost," Dorrell said. The new grocery store would come to life in the old 6,500-square-foot building.

Everyone at Mission Waco and many people residing in Waco couldn't wait to see this transformation.

"After a meeting with over 60 neighbors and months

of research studying other groups who have done similar projects around the nation, 80 percent of the neighborhood agreed that a nonprofit grocery would be their first choice and the most significant investment in the area," Brown said. Mission Waco needed $488,000 to complete the project by November. With the help many donors and selling "O.A.S.I.S. stocks" (Opportunity Advancing Social Innovation Stock), the organization saw God's work at hand.

In May, the staff and board of directors were overwhelmed when they heard that two-thirds of the project had been funded. Volunteers were pouring in to offer their skills and efforts for the grocery store. The city of Waco gave the green light on the Jubilee Food Market on June 30. By August, only 8 percent more funds remained for the renovation. Chip and Joanna Gaines of “Fixer Upper” fame, donated the last 5 percent needed for the renovation goal, which was raised by an auction of the almost 100-year-old Elite Cafe's contents. By September, phase two was in full

swing - filling the new grocery store with food.

After a few ups and downs and many blessings along the way, The Jubilee Food Market planned a "soft opening" for Nov. 21, just three days before Thanksgiving.

The project is still ongoing with an additional $75,000 or more needed to stock the store with merchandise that the market will sell as inexpensively as possible. The store will sell mostly food items with 10 percent of the store containing items such as toilet paper, feminine products and toothpaste.

Mission Waco is proud of this accomplishment and is continuing to aid the community with new projects like the Urban REAP (Renewable Energy and Agriculture Project) program. "Mission Waco will develop a complex next to the Jubilee Food Market with an aquaponics greenhouse for raising produce; solar panels; a composting system; a rainwater collection and water purification system; areas for food growing; and a small training room for school groups," Brown said.

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the

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oton

M Joy

Baylor's Black Gospel Music Restoration Project works to save the sound of a people

From the fields of slavery, to the protests of the civil rights movement, to the current Black Lives Matter movement, the melodies of gospel music have been a present force in carrying African-Americans through times of strife. While gospel music began with Negro spirituals and developed into the foundational roots of various genres of music including rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm and blues, and pop.

Despite its significant presence in the culture of AfricanAmerican church communities, gospel music began to disappear. Due to racial discrimination, most AfricanAmerican musicians did not have the means to formally publicize their music. As a result, copyright information was absent and music became unidentifiable. With the move away from vinyl and record players, it was just a matter of time before this music would simply vanish.

While the disappearance of the gospel classics received little public attention and concern, one individual began to reverse the devastating trend. In 2005 Robert Darden, professor of Journalism, Public Relations and New Media at Baylor University, wrote a column for The New York Times expressing his concern about these less prominent foundational gospel songs that seemed to fade away.

“I became alarmed and concerned that the vinyl from gospel music’s Golden Age (1945-1970) was disappearing,” said Darden, who is a professor of journalism at Baylor.

“Some figures have it as high as 75 percent of it as lost or unavailable.”

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LEFT In addition to recording a digital copy of the music, the project worked to include scans of the assocatied records.

Photos provided by the Baylor Libraries

At the time when African-Americans owned very few newspapers, no radio stations, no TV stations, and publishers weren’t publishing their books, they were releasing intensely personal, informative music.

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Philanthropist Charles Royce noticed Darden’s article and offered to fund what has become the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. The project was designed to collect, digitize and preserve the historically significant music.

Darden partnered with Baylor Libraries to create the Ray I. Riley Digitization Center and since its beginning, the project has enabled the digitization of as many as 4,000 songs with the largest collection of Golden Age gospel music in the world, Darden said.

Darden described how the depth of gospel music from the Golden Age is profoundly rich because it artistically communicates the sentiments of an entire nation.

“At the time when African-Americans owned very few newspapers, no radio stations, no TV stations and publishers weren’t publishing their books, they were releasing intensely personal, informative music and historians around the world in just the last few years have begun to realize this is a text worthy of study,” Darden said.

As a result of the historical significance that these songs carry, the project has made it possible for scholars studying gospel music and African-American studies to come from all over the world to access this music. Darden’s project has allowed Moody Library to house one of the largest collections of sheet music of any kind. The role of libraries in communities has made a major shift from being information holders to locations that display interesting collections that aren’t typically found in museums.

“They’re not just a physical place to keep things, but to

be gatekeepers and providers of information and unique collections of historical significance,” Darden said.

Darden has written “Nothing but Love in God’s Water,” which comprises two volumes that discuss the impact of gospel music throughout history. He originally intended to write two books about specific periods of gospel music throughout black history but he realized that it is an ongoing phenomenon that has reached other cultures. Darden saw that these songs that began as songs of hope and protest for slaves hundreds of years ago continued through Reconstruction, the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South, the world wars, and the Montgomery Bus boycott. However, that’s not where they end.

“They pick up again with the sit-ins and the freedom rides and they don’t end with Resurrection City, they don’t end with the fall of the Berlin wall, they don’t end Arab Spring. They’re still going and it’s an unbroken, apostolic succession,” Darden said.

Darden even noticed that the music is crossing cultural boundaries. The Arab Spring of 2011 was a series of antigovernmental protests that arose throughout the Middle East in order to fight against dictatorships, brutality of security officials, rising prices, unemployment rates and corrupt governments. As he watched footage of the protests on BBC, the news would cut to Morocco or Egypt and he saw people of various races singing “We Shall Overcome.”

The occurence of the song was significant because it was used as the anthem of the civil rights movement in an effort

to represent the conviction that African-Americans would conquer racial discrimination.

“Every time oppressed peoples do some kind of resistance, these songs re-emerge,” Darden said.

The very song that gave protesters of the civil rights movement hope for equality was the same song that encouraged the people of the Middle East to persevere in their fight for better governments.

Darden’s project has served not only to preserve this music, but it has also provided the opportunity for albums to receive their own cover art. In connection with the project, one of the assignments given to students enrolled in a Package Design course at Baylor University is to design music covers for albums that never had the opportunity to get CD covers. Eric Ames, curator of digital collections for the Gospel Music Restoration Project, got the idea to allow students to display their talents through giving a visual element to an entirely music-based collection.

“The music is amazing, it stands on its own, but we’re trying to find new ways for Baylor students to plug into that collection and be creative with it,” Ames said.

Students were tasked to listen to songs from the album they were assigned and design a cover based on the emotions the songs evoked. Students turned in a diverse set of work, yielding designs that portrayed what the album would have looked like when it was recorded and art that exemplified what the cover art would look like if the music were released today. The students were rewarded for the

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work that they produced by having their designs featured in an exhibit in Moody Library titled “Visions of Rapture.”

“It was exciting for them,” Ames said. “It was informative and they said they loved the challenge of being able to take something they weren’t familiar with and give it a visual identity.”

Students that have had the opportunity to learn about the Gospel Music Restoration project through other classes have also gained a profound appreciation for this project. Christian Broussard, a junior at Baylor University and the director of the Heavenly Voices choir, has a heartfelt admiration for this project because the songs that it introduced to him were able to convey the story behind why the songs were written and the conditions of the society surrounding the musician.

“I think we would lose a large amount of gospel music if we didn’t have this collection and I’m extremely grateful for this collection because it’s definitely broadened my scope of what gospel

music is,” Broussard said.

The project has had so much influence that it has its own exhibit featured in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Aside from being mesmerized by his own exhibit, Darden expressed gratitude for the opportunity he had to mingle with other donors and explore the other displays in the museum.

The impact that the project had within the small confines of Waco is expected to expand dramatically since an estimated 8 million people will visit the museum and have the opportunity to hear this music each year, Darden said.

Darden referenced a quote from the late writer Zora Neale Hurston about the continual impact of the spirituals: “They’re always here with us; they’re slumbering waiting for our time of need.”

“That was before the civil rights movement before they become the freedom songs,” Darden said. “She was right; they don’t ever go away and they never will.”

Photos by Rachel Leland

See album cover designs at

BAYLORFOCUSMAGAZINE.COM

ABOVE Robert Darden, professor of Journalism, Public Relations and New Media at Baylor University lays out the equipment used to digitize the collection from physical vinyl copies to digital MP3 files. All digitization occurs in the Wegner sound isolation booth, which was installed by the Baylor Libraries in 2007 to meet the project's needs.

RIGHT Surrounded by records, Darden displays an album recorded by The Freedom Singers in 1964. The project collected vinyls and high-resolution audio files from donors across the country.

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Hannah Johns

Living in the L

PAST Abandoned factory L.L. Sams & Sons turns into a non-traditional living space

By Daniel Smith

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ocated off of LaSalle Avenue and First Street, L.L. Sams Historic Lofts was purchased in 1947, nearly a half-century after the Reverend L.L. Sams of Whitney set out upon a modest business venture that would mature into a multimillion-dollar mammoth of furniture supply. Sams’ initial goal was to help local Texas churches furnish their interiors. Indeed, most nearby churches needed the improvements. Sams had no shortage of clientele in these early decades. He oscillated between holding a fixed salary and earning commission on behalf of the northern factories he represented, but the latter position best accommodated his preacher’s lifestyle. A 1952 volume of Baylor Business Studies lists his motivations for entering the industry: his income was not enough to support his family; he believed congregations should enjoy beautiful and inviting worship areas; and he wanted to give his children a Baylor University education. His son Ross joined the company in 1920, the same year it expanded beyond its mail-order roots and encompassed real-time manufacture. Sams valued the idea of a family business – his wife tended to the books, and

their first secretary wasn’t hired until 1922, when the Sams’ household and business operations relocated to Houston.

Ross’s brother Rowe came aboard in 1924, and in 1927 the two sons took charge of the company.

Then the Depression hit, and the next 10 years almost killed their enterprise. Rowe Sams bowed out, leaving Ross and a staff of one to weather yearly grosses of less than $1,400. The Texas oil boom, however, provided enough statewide economic stimulus to keep small businesses like L.L. Sams from tanking. By 1940, Rowe had returned and sales had improved. With eyes toward further expansion, Ross and Rowe integrated service and delivery under the guarantee of a single payment. Soon after, an interested party approached the brothers, agreeing to buy in on the condition that his church be ready that very Sunday. Rival contractors demurred, one competitor scoffing that it was at least a nine-month job, but Ross and Rowe Sams followed through, and their work was peerless. They brought with them this ethos of determination which had broadened their influence to more than 20 states. Through their leadership,

their doggedness, and their networking savvy, these two brothers had propelled their father’s pet project into the stratosphere. Appalachian Oak lumber from the eastern U.S. was shipped to Waco, where it was transformed by fine craftsmanship into pews, pulpits and tables. In its final decade, L.L. Sams & Sons deviated from its church market, ultimately agreeing in the 1990s to a merger with Royal Seating Corp., which is now a trademarked brand of School Specialty Inc. Turning from LaSalle Avenue onto First Street, guests are greeted by the old factory’s distinctive lettering, held aloft after so many decades by nine triangular braces and transverse beams – LL SAMS & SONS CHURCH FURNITURE. The residents’ swimming pool glimmers a soft beryl blue. Steady flows of saltwater flow downa unobtrusively from two repainted cane-shaped pipes, sunlight playing off their lambent little plash. The property owner, Crystal Metz, comments on how easily it catches the eye. “It’s one of the first things people notice,” she says. Both Metz and her assistant agree that the pool dates back no

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RIGHT Coppell senior Gavin Pugh makes lunch in the refurbished kitchen while his roommate, Jesse Stanford, cleans the apartment's chalkboard.

BOTTOM Stanford examines the exposed cement walls of the apartment's bathroom. L.L. Sams worked to blend the dated foundation of the original building with modern amenities.

BOTTOM In order to better use the smaller spaces, most apartments and lofts include elevated sleeping areas for renters.

Photos by Hannah Johns

further than the early 2000s.

Toward the Lofts’ office building are corrugated iron roofs, exposed networks of tarnished copper, industrial sheds once housing timber and tools and perhaps the smell of formaldehyde resin glue. Everything in sight, old and new, coalesces gracefully.

Certain hallways terminate in thick steel fire doors perpendicular to where you came from. They’re still on rollers, but good luck getting them to budge. The clear-coated wood floors…the cement walls…towering vertical pipework thicker than a live oak tree, sometimes fully exposed, sometimes protruding from the walls…all of these elements are authentic fragments from the old family company. The apartments themselves, which can accommodate up to eight tenants, exhibit the same sort of tasteful industrial bricolage. “Our goal here is to make it very homey,” says Metz’s assistant. Metz nods, also stressing how she hopes to organize more Lofts-wide communal

events. For her, the residents and their involvement are key to L.L. Sams’ future as a sustainable and everchanging piece of Waco history. She already spearheads weekly gettogethers like Taco Tuesdays and Do-Nut Know What We Would Do Without You Fridays. “It is at these events,” she says, “that we are able to say thank you and build a familial atmosphere.

We let our residents know we are here to help make their stay with us the best it can be and are sad to see them leave when they must move forward.”

Despite her new role as manager in 2016, Metz is no stranger to L.L. Sams, she worked under the property’s prior manager. “I love it,” Metz says. “We really love our residents.”

When asked how she feels about implementing further changes, again her perspective hinges on the Lofts community: “I want to hear my residents’ feedback. I want to know what makes them happy. As for changes, it depends on what they think needs to change. If there is something,

"We really love our residents. I want to hear my residents' feedback."

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Photos by Hannah Johns

I’m open to it. Other than that, just little exterior updates here or there.”

No two apartments share the same blueprint, but their commonalities, convey the sense that every room is kindred.

At heart, these apartments are templates primed for the individual touch. Their antiquity is no impediment to imagination, and Metz corroborates their value as figurative and literal canvases. “We allow you to paint the walls,” she confides. She pauses, grins, and adds: “We actually encourage it!”

FROM LEFT Jesse Stanford updates the apartment's dining room chalkboard for the week. The apartment complex offers four floor plans with prices ranging from $503 to $905 a person. SECOND An exterior shot of the building emphasizes the building's unaltered facade. The factory's original signs, walls and windows were kept for the apartment. THIRD The apartment's pool sparkles in the sun. Ammenities offered by the apartment included the pool, a recreational facility and free parking.

W

ith its crumbling red brick, broken glass from its high-arched windows, and the air of desertion, the Geyser Ice Plant is a shadow of its former self. Over 100 years ago, the building sitting at 927 Webster Ave. was one of the most recognizable sites in a bustling Waco.

Testimony from Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History recorded Waco citizens reminiscing of a time when Geyser Ice Co. trucks could regularly be seen driving through the streets.

The families would hang a card outside their door with the number 25, 50, 75 or 100, signifying how much ice the family wanted. Once the driver of the ice truck would see the card, he would stop and unload the desired poundage of ice, carrying it into the family’s kitchen ice box.

“They were almost a part of the family,” Waco resident Thomas Hardy. “They’d just come in the back door, knocked, Courtesy of Baylor's Texas Collection and asked if everybody was decent because the iceman was here.” The city seemed to run through the Geyser ice plant.

The managers of Geyser assumed places of leadership within the city, and Waco citizens could boast of living near one of the most modern ice plants in the American South. Despite the historic transfomations blistering summer months that infamously plagued Central

By John Isaacson Texas, Waco’s citizens of the 20th century never had to worry about ice. As the manager during Geyser’s peak years, J. Albert Greene, put it, Geyser had always met any demand.

For a time, the city dubbed itself as “Geyser City,” thanks in part to the artesian wells found in Waco during the late 19th century. Water, pressurized underground, would spring into the air, catching the awe of Wacoans. The ice plant used those springs, dubbing its ice pure. The ice plant was founded June 25, 1882, by Adolphus Busch of Anheuser-Busch Brewing Co., writes J.B. Smith for Waco History, an organization dedicated to preserving Waco's history. Already a rising power in the Midwest, the German Busch made his fortune brewing beer and pushing beer’s popularity across the American South.

Thus, directly neighboring the Busch brewery in Waco,

ICECOLD Geyser Ice Plant undergoes

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Adolphus Busch founded an ice plant. At the time, Busch brewed an innovative pasteurized bottled beer, which needed to be kept cold in order not to spoil. Therefore, this special beer would be brewed in Waco, trains would stop at the neighboring tracks, and ice and beer would be shipped across Texas.

The success and popularity of Geyser ice plant grew at an astounding rate. Since refrigerators would not be produced en masse until the end of World War II, the citizens of Waco needed ice. By 1920, the plant was capable of producing 200 tons of ice per day. The cork-insulated building kept the ice and the ammonia compressors functional. Although by the 1920s the pressurized artesian wells no longer sprung water highly into the air, there was still an abundance of underground water that the plant could drill for, distill and then freeze into ice. By 1924, Geyser had 14 double-horse carriages that would deliver ice throughout the city. The Geyser manager at the time, J. Albert Greene, was presiding over a booming business. Greene, who hailed from Canada, had worked his way through entry level jobs for the Busch company and become the manager and secretary-treasurer for the Geyser ice plant. He helped make Geyser very visible throughout the Waco community by involving himself with the Rotary Club, Lions Club, becoming president of the Ad League, and director of the Y.M.B.L. (Young Men’s Business League). Greene also helped lead Waco through membership in the Chamber of Commerce, and his leisurely influence extended to the Spring Lake Country Club and the Waco Boating and Fishing Club, according to a 1926 article published in The Waco News-Tribune.

As the 20th century progressed, Geyser invested in the newest technology. By 1933 the plant’s electrical and power needs were derived from two diesel engines. The technology of these special engines, specifically built for Geyser, could not be found in any other ice plant in Central Texas, making Geyser one of the most modern ice producers in the South. Soon after, the horse drawn carriages that carried ice were replaced

with large carrying trucks. The ice plant opened storage space for Waco citizens' perishables and furs. Geyser also opened smaller sister plants and storage houses in the neighboring towns of Clifton and in West. However, despite the glamor of the plant’s success, there were very real dangers for employees working in the Geyser ice plant. There were reported deaths from machinery accidents, crushing amounts of ice falling onto the workers, and even ice sliding off from cars and hitting bystanders on the side of the road. Yet none of these tragedies could hinder the local impact Geyser ice had on Waco. Whether by railroad, carriage and horse, or trucks, Waco was a critical commercial spot in Central Texas.

However, the booming of Geyser would soon hit its peak.

Post-World War II, refrigerators would become commonplace in households. Waco citizens no longer had to use Geyser’s storage amenities for their perishables. The general demand for ice houses decreased. While railcars still used Geyser for its ice, the company’s peak days of 200 tons of ice were ending. By 1954 the ice plant came under the control of Southland Corp. of Dallas, which later became the parent company of 7-Eleven, according to an article in The Waco-News Tribune. They used the Geyser ice plant to store their own company’s Readdy Ice brand. By the early 2000s, the old Geyser building was storing up to 1 million pounds of ice a day. Yet soon parts of the building were condemned as no longer usable, and use for the building faded.

Today, outsiders can still see the red brick and large arched windows. If they walk inside, they could look at the empty old ice storage space and think it was an old swimming pool.

Geyser ice plant no longer occupies a place in the everyday life of Wacoans. Yet as one of the oldest buildings in Waco, it still offers nostalgic vestiges of a prosperous time for Waco; a prosperous time where trains, carriages, trucks, and people could be seen down Webster Avenue. All looking for some ice on a hot Waco day.

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W

aco SPOTLIGHT W

in the

by Rachel Leland

The Waco Hippodrome continues to serve as a culture center for downtown Waco

aco may be in the heart of a conservative Texas, but in celebration of Halloween the Waco Hippodrome Theatre featured two sold-out shows of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The 1975 musical was performed in all its raunchiness in front of a screen showing the original movie. Guests stood up, laughed and danced with the performers all night.

Although the Hippodrome is first and foremost a movie theater, live performances are no stranger to its stage. Built in 1914 as a venue for vaudeville shows, the Hippodrome has long entertained the guests and natives of Central Texas. At the beginning, live acts held the theater’s spotlight, but as moving pictures gained prominence, cinema slowly began to replace vaudeville as the main act. These movies were silent films, but they too were replaced again by “talkies” later in the next decade.

Now the theater is known as an “indie” theater because it screens films that moviegoers can’t find elsewhere in Waco, such as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” These independent films set the Hippodrome apart from its local competitors.

During the mid-twentieth century, the Hippodrome first experienced the challenges created by changing demographics and industry. It was the 1960’s, and people began to favor the suburbs over downtown.

New theaters sprouted up. Unable to compete with the convenience of the larger, suburban theaters, the

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Hippodrome closed in 1974 and remained vacant for six years until the Junior League commenced a restoration project to restore the historic theater.

Sadly, this was not the only time the theater would close. Still facing similar commercial threats from the suburbs, the Hippodrome had to close its doors once more in 2010. It was only two years ago that the Waco cinema treasure began screening films again. Local developers Shane and Cody Turner bought the building and began renovations. The two brothers kept the vintage aesthetic, but made novel renovations including dividing a screening room so that two films can play at once. The Hippodrome also offers food and drinks, much like the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. The theater also sells snacks to passersby from its side window. All of these amenities represent a business model that looks to provide customers with an experience not to be found in a basic theater.

The Hippodrome doesn’t just show pictures. Some weekends dueling pianos can be heard from the street.

On Mondays, the theater hosts its weekly Movie Mondays, a free event open to Baylor students interested in watching a film that is usually social-justice centered.

As of late, the Hippodrome’s theaters are often used for charity events, making the theater a hub of the community, rather than just a place that serves popcorn and forgettable flicks. Photo by Rachel Leland

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