Tays Place Public Housing Project
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Funded under the Housing Act of 1937 as one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal projects, Tays Place is the oldest-surviving public housing project in El Paso. In 1938, the housing authority of the city of El Paso was created and plans were developed for two large public housing projects, Alamito and Tays Place, in the crowded and impoverished neighborhoods of the city’s southside. The chief architect for both projects was Guy L. Frazer, assisted by Trost & Trost and several other local architectural firms. Robert E. Mckee served as the general contractor. New deal housing was designed to provide a high quality, comfortable and safe environment with many modern conveniences. Alamito opened in 1940 and served the old Segundo Barrio. Tays Place, named for pioneer episcopalian Minister Joseph Tays, was sited in the Chamizal neighborhood, and opened in 1941. Tays Place was El Paso’s only formally segregated public housing project. Most apartment units were leased to white and Hispanic tenants, but south of the Franklin Canal were 33 units for African American families. These units were located across the street from Douglass Grammar and High School, the city’s only designated African American educational facility. In 1952, the African American section was expanded to include 30 additional housing units. Alamito remained in use for more than 60 years until the complex was demolished in 2006 and replaced with new housing units. The old African American section of Tays Place was demolished in 2016 and replaced with apartments the following year. Tays Place apartment buildings north of the canal have undergone periodic maintenance and renovation. However, through their impact on El Paso and structural integrity, they represent a fine example of new deal-era federal housing. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built under the New Deal's Housing Act of 1937, Tays Place opened in 1941 as one of El Paso's first public housing projects, bringing modern, comfortable apartments to the city's crowded south side. Like much of the era's housing it was segregated — a separate section south of the Franklin Canal held units for African American families, near the city's only Black school. It remains the oldest surviving public housing in El Paso.
Why it matters
Tays Place stands as both a monument to New Deal housing reform and a physical record of the segregation that shaped even the federal government's efforts to house the poor.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The 1930s were years of crisis and experiment in America. The Great Depression had thrown millions out of work and exposed how badly the nation's poorest citizens were housed — in crowded, unsafe, unsanitary quarters that no amount of private charity could fix. In response, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal reached into areas the federal government had never touched before, and one of those was housing. The Housing Act of 1937, often called the Wagner-Steagall Act, committed federal money to building decent homes for low-income families.
El Paso, on the far western tip of Texas at the border with Mexico, had exactly the conditions the new law was meant to address. Its south side held densely packed, impoverished neighborhoods where families lived in substandard housing. In 1938 the city created a housing authority and drew up plans for two large projects to serve those crowded districts — a local expression of a national commitment.
Those two projects, Alamito and Tays Place, rose at the end of the decade. Alamito opened in 1940 to serve the old Segundo Barrio; Tays Place, in the Chamizal neighborhood, opened in 1941. They were designed to embody the New Deal's promise that even the poorest family deserved a home that was safe, comfortable, and equipped with the modern conveniences that better-off Americans already enjoyed.
People & events
Tays Place took its name from Joseph Tays, a pioneer Episcopal minister of early El Paso — a fitting choice for a project meant to serve the city's founding-era neighborhoods. Its design brought together some of the region's leading building talent. The chief architect for both Alamito and Tays Place was Guy L. Frazer, assisted by the celebrated firm of Trost & Trost — long the most prominent architectural practice in El Paso — along with other local firms, with Robert E. McKee serving as general contractor.
But the human story of Tays Place is inseparable from the line that ran through it: the Franklin Canal. The project was El Paso's only formally segregated public housing. Most of its apartments were leased to white and Hispanic tenants, while south of the canal stood a separate group of thirty-three units set aside for African American families. In 1952, that section was enlarged with thirty additional units — a growth that speaks both to demand and to the rigid boundaries that shaped where Black families were permitted to live.
The placement of those units was no accident. They sat directly across from Douglass Grammar and High School — named for the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass — which was the city's only designated educational facility for African American students. Home and school, both segregated, both concentrated in one corner: the geography itself tells the story of how thoroughly separation was built into daily life.
Its place in the American story
Tays Place is a physical record of a painful national contradiction. The New Deal's housing program was a genuine act of reform, offering dignity and safety to families the market had failed. Yet the same federal effort accepted, and often enforced, racial segregation. Across the country, public housing of this era was frequently divided by race as a matter of policy — decent homes offered on unequal terms. The canal at Tays Place drew that national policy onto a single map.
That makes the site doubly significant. It stands, first, as a monument to a moment when the federal government decided that housing the poor was a public responsibility — an idea that reshaped American cities for generations. And it stands, second, as evidence that reform and injustice were delivered in the same package, that progress in one dimension coexisted with entrenched inequality in another.
The later history of the complex reflects the long arc of that story. Alamito served for more than sixty years before it was demolished in 2006 and rebuilt. The old African American section of Tays Place was torn down in 2016 and replaced with new apartments the following year. The buildings north of the canal, maintained and renovated over the decades, remain the oldest surviving public housing in El Paso — a rare, intact example of New Deal-era federal housing still standing.
If you visit
Tays Place is on El Paso's south side, in the low country near the border, a part of the city shaped by generations of working families. This is not a manicured tourist site but a living neighborhood, and that is exactly what gives it its power: you are looking at housing that people have called home for more than eighty years, not a preserved relic behind a rope.
As you take in the surviving apartment buildings north of the old canal line, let yourself register both halves of what they represent. The solid, well-built construction speaks to the New Deal's ambition to house people well. The very fact of the canal — the line that once divided who lived where — speaks to the limits and injustices bound up in that same effort. Reading the marker with both truths in mind is the honest way to visit.
El Paso rewards the traveler curious about the border's layered past, and Tays Place fits naturally into a route through the city's historic south side. Give the place a slow, respectful look, mindful that families live here still. What you are seeing is a rare survivor — a chapter of American housing history that most cities have long since torn down, standing in plain sight.
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
- · Franklin Roosevelt
- · Joseph Tays
- · Guy L. Frazer
Themes & tags
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