Georgetown High School Building
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in 1923-24 on the original site of Southwestern University, this structure served as Georgetown High School for over fifty years. Designed by Austin architect Charles H. Page and exhibiting influences of the Spanish Colonial Revival style of architecture, the building features a Baroque entryway with cast stone detailing that includes motifs of shells, flowers, urns, and garlands. A gymnasium was added to the back of the building in the 1940s. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1988
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rising in 1923–24 on ground that once held Southwestern University, this building served Georgetown's high school students for more than half a century. Austin architect Charles H. Page gave it a Spanish Colonial Revival face, crowned by a Baroque entryway whose cast-stone shells, flowers, urns, and garlands announced the community's pride in its schools. A gymnasium joined the rear in the 1940s as the school grew.
Why it matters
The building reflects the era's investment in public education and the distinctive architecture Texas towns chose to dignify their schools.
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Related people
- · Charles H. Page
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Original Site of Southwestern University
Georgetown, TX
Texas Methodists founded four colleges before the Civil War, and after the war the Rev. Dr. Francis Asbury Mood set out to consolidate them into a single, centralized university. Georgetown competed for the prize, offering this donated site, and in 1873 it was chosen as home to the new institution—chartered in 1875 as Southwestern University under a union of the four earlier schools. Mood led it until his death, and though the university moved to its present campus in 1900, a preparatory department lingered here until 1916.
Negro Fine Arts School
Georgetown, TX
In 1946 — two decades before Georgetown's schools integrated — Southwestern University professor Iola Bowden Chambers and three of her students began teaching piano to children in the city's African American community. Backed by the school board, the First Methodist Church, and university students, the Negro Fine Arts School grew to welcome more than 200 children, adding voice and art lessons, annual recitals, and college scholarships. Its graduates went on to earn music degrees and teach the next generation.
First United Methodist Church of Georgetown
Georgetown, TX
Begun in 1849 as a frontier mission served by circuit-riding preachers, this Methodist congregation gained a resident pastor in 1879 and raised its first building on the young Southwestern University campus. The present limestone church, hand-cut on site in 1891–93 and laid out on the plan of a Greek cross, was overseen by physics professor Robert S. Hyer, and it later shaped the callings of two brothers who became Methodist bishops.
The G. W. Riley House
Georgetown, TX
This Georgetown residence dates to 1872, built by a Southwestern University chaplain who helped found the town's First Methodist church. In 1903 it passed to the Rev. George W. Riley, a circuit-riding Methodist minister who planted or served congregations in a string of Texas towns across nearly half a century. Riley and his wife settled here in part to educate their children, and the house has stayed in the family ever since.