Forney High School Building
Forney, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Forney's first schoolhouse was built here about 1868, and its first general store was built nearby by pioneer settler John C. McKellar in 1871. This building was erected by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1938-39. Designed by WPA architect Hoke Smith, the Spanish Colonial revival style structure features a tile roof, multi-light windows, buff brick, and wrought iron and cast stone details. A high school was housed here until 1974 and a middle school until 1993. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Forney's earliest schoolhouse rose on this ground about 1868, near the general store pioneer settler John C. McKellar built in 1871. The present building, a Spanish Colonial Revival design by WPA architect Hoke Smith, was erected by the Works Progress Administration in 1938–39 with a tile roof, buff brick, and wrought-iron detail. It served as a high school into 1974 and a middle school until 1993.
Why it matters
As a New Deal–era WPA school, it embodies the federal public-works effort that reshaped small-town America during the Great Depression.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Forney's first schoolhouse went up on this ground around 1868, Texas was only a few years past the Civil War and in the middle of Reconstruction. The Blackland Prairie east of Dallas was still thinly settled farm country. Families were only starting to build the churches, stores, and schools that turn scattered homesteads into a town.
A general store came in 1871, which tells you the settlement was growing into a real community. For most of the next century, schooling in places like Kaufman County followed the rhythm of farm life, and a town's school building was one of the surest signs that it meant to last.
The building you see today belongs to a very different moment. By the late 1930s the Great Depression had flattened farm prices and emptied bank accounts across rural Texas. Washington answered with the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency that put jobless people to work on public projects, and schools were among the most common things they built.
People & events
The story starts with pioneer settler John C. McKellar, who built Forney's first general store near here in 1871. In a young prairie town, a store like his was more than a place to buy flour and nails. It was where news traded hands, where mail often waited, and where neighbors met. A schoolhouse and a store side by side made this spot an early heart of Forney.
Seventy years later, the WPA came to town. Between 1938 and 1939, federal work crews raised this building to plans by WPA architect Hoke Smith. He chose the Spanish Colonial Revival style: a tile roof, buff brick, many-paned windows, and wrought iron and cast stone trim. That was an ambitious look for a small-town school, and a sign of how seriously these public buildings were taken.
The building then did what it was made for, generation after generation. It housed Forney's high school until 1974 and a middle school until 1993. Think of how many first dances, final exams, and graduation-day nerves those walls saw. In 1995 the state honored it as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
Forney's school is one small piece of one of the largest public building efforts in American history. Through the WPA, the federal government paid out-of-work Americans to build schools, roads, courthouses, and parks in thousands of communities. Many of those buildings are still in use today.
The program had two goals: put wages in people's pockets during the Depression, and leave something lasting behind. A rural school built with New Deal money often gave a small town a better building than it could ever have paid for alone. Texas is dotted with them.
The building's style says something too. By the 1930s, Spanish Colonial Revival had become a way for Texans and other Southwesterners to celebrate the region's Spanish heritage. Seeing it on a prairie schoolhouse east of Dallas shows how widely that regional pride had spread.
If you visit
Stand back and look at the building as a whole first. The tile roof, warm buff brick, and rows of multi-light windows give it a Mediterranean feel you might not expect in North Texas farm country. Then move in closer and look for the wrought iron and cast stone details the marker mentions. That small-scale craftsmanship is the signature of good WPA work.
While you're here, remember that this ground is older than the building. Forney's first schoolhouse stood on this site around 1868, and McKellar's store stood nearby. You're looking at nearly a century and a half of the town's commitment to its children, all in one spot.
Forney sits just east of Dallas, which makes it an easy stop if you're heading toward East Texas. Pair it with other Kaufman County towns for a day exploring small-town Texas history, and keep an eye out for other New Deal-era public buildings along the way. Once you know how to spot them, you'll see them everywhere.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Hoke Smith
- · John C. McKellar
Related events
- · Works Progress Administration construction (1938–39)
Themes & tags
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