Doak Pavilion Site
Taylor, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1891 by Dr. A. V. Doak, early settler and civic leader, at end of his street car line, which operated three mule-drawn cars. Used for plays, dances, other amusements. Held crowds of 1,000. In 1900 the pavilion was sold and dismantled.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1891 Dr. A. V. Doak, an early Taylor settler and civic leader, built a grand amusement pavilion at the end of his own mule-drawn streetcar line. Capable of holding a thousand people, it hosted plays, dances, and entertainments for the growing railroad town. The venture was short-lived — the pavilion was sold and torn down in 1900.
Why it matters
The pavilion and its little streetcar line capture the optimistic civic boosterism of Gilded Age Texas towns, where a doctor might also run public transit and a grand hall for his neighbors.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · A. V. Doak
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Doak Home
Taylor, TX
Built in the 1860s in an early ranch-style form, this Williamson County house has belonged to the Doak family since 1878. Its longtime owner, A. V. Doak, was Taylor's first physician and a civic force who helped organize the town's mule-drawn streetcar line. The home passed down through three generations of Doak doctors.
Taylor Post Office
Taylor, TX
Taylor grew up around a post office that opened in 1876 as "Taylorsville" and took the town's shorter name when the city incorporated in 1882. After decades in rented quarters, the postal service gave the community this dignified Classical Revival building in 1929-30, its round-arched windows, columned portico, and garlanded parapet typical of the federal architecture that dotted American towns in the 1920s.
Preslar-Hewitt Building
Taylor, TX
Taylor grew as a cotton and railroad center, and in 1914 Hugo Hunke built this two-story commercial block to anchor an important downtown corner, with shop space below and offices above. Early tenants included tailors and a grocery, but the building is best remembered as the home of Preslar-Hewitt Pharmacy from 1929 to 1954. Its pilasters, capitals, transoms, decorative tilework, and dentiled entablature typify the era's proud main-street architecture.
City of Taylor
Taylor, TX
When the International & Great Northern Railroad crossed Williamson County in 1876, it spawned a town called Taylorsville, named for railroad executive Moses Taylor, with lots sold that June and a post office opened in August. Sitting on a cattle trail, the town quickly became a major shipping point for cattle, then grew further after a second rail line arrived in 1882 and the community incorporated. Renamed simply Taylor in 1892, it added cotton to cattle and rails as pillars of a prosperous local economy.