Vintage Texas

[KevinFromTexas]

Waco, Texas in 1917.

Rare photo here showing the old City Hall. This is actually the first photo I've seen of it.
That building was demolished.
Many of the buildings you see to the left are also gone, either torn down or burned down.
The tall building there is the Alico Building, 282 feet tall with 22 floors.
It was built in 1911. It's still there, and is the tallest building between Austin and Dallas/Fort Worth.
That building in the background is still there too.
The building with the white dome is the McLennan County Courthouse, built in 1901.

Source: http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/p/panorama.html

[HomeInMyShoes]

Cool. I really need to check out the found photos section more often.

[KevinFromTexas]

I'm really glad I found it because it's a great photo showing Waco's size back then, (about 30,000 in 1917). Today Waco has 120,000 in the city and 226,189 in the metro (2005). The city covers 95 square miles. Waco was founded around 1849, with the first city block being planned and first house being built that year. The city was named in honor of the Waco Indians who lived in the area until the Cherokee forced them to move north. What's amazing is that just 21 years after the city's first structure was built, a log cabin, the longest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi River was constructed. 62 years later the city would have one of the tallest buildings in the state, the Alico Building.

It also shows the density compared to the plethora of parking lots now days. It's actually pretty impressive. I see at least 6 or 7 highrises there. This is compared to the 5 that Austin had at the same time. As I mentioned in my photo thread of Waco, the city was hit with an F5 tornado in 1953. It was the deadliest ever to hit Texas. 114 people died and 597 were injured. 30 of them died when a 6-story department store building collapsed, and 61 were killed on a single block. The city was devastated, and never really fully came back.

Last November I rode my bike all over downtown Waco and Baylor University. See if you can spot any buildings from this pano in my photos. Have a look:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=141054

[KevinFromTexas]

Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:F...oc_6a14633.jpg

[tjh1]

Interesting photos!

That panorama of FW is awesome.
I read in the FW Star-Telegram a while back that Waco is trying to rejuvenate their downtown! I think there has already been a project or 2 completed.

[SLO]

cool shots,
Waco looks great. Its too bad the tornado devasted the city. The downtown has a nice setting along the Brazos River. Last time I was there we stopped at the Dr Pepper museum, the birthplace of the official unofficial beverage of the Republic of Texas...