History

Early History of College Park

College Station’s First Neighborhood

From the time it opened in 1876, Texas A&M provided on-campus housing for most or all faculty members. Because the campus was distant from the town of Bryan, with limited transportation between them, most faculty lived in campus housing. But as A&M’s enrollment grew, creating a need for more and more faculty, the financial outlay for housing increased. In about 1920, the Administration felt that campus residences blocked expansion of campus buildings and began discussing the possibility of asking faculty to move off campus. This led to the beginning of the earliest residential developments in what is now College Station.

In 1921, five A&M faculty members formed the Southside Development Company and bought 85 acres of land adjoining the southern edge of campus. These five partners were Robert R. Lancaster, with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service; Daniel Scoates, Department of Agricultural Engineering; M.M. Daugherty, also with Texas Agricultural Extension Service, C.W. Burchard, Department of Chemistry; and Floyd B. Clark, Department of Economics. Dr. Clark was the managing partner. Dr. Floyd B. Clark and his wife, Ruth Haines Clark, came to Texas A&M sometime around 1915. He was a professor in the Department of Economics, and later served as Head of that Department. The Southside Development Company later came to be frequently referred to as “the College Park Development Company.”

Southside (College Park) Development Company drew up plans for streets, parks, and building lots. They commissioned Frederick W. Hensel, the first landscape designer known to have been associated with the College, to design the plat layout and landscaping (information regarding Hensel’s role is from an article by Nancy Volkman, in CITE 41 (Houston), Spring 1998, pp. 36-37) . This development came to be known as "College Park." A copy of the earliest known map of the College Park development is attached. A small creek (a branch of Bee Creek) ran from Northwest to Southeast, almost down the middle of the area. A large park, originally called Dexter Park (now re-named Brison Park), was laid out on either side of the creek. The earliest plans and drawings of the development show that it was intended to dam the creek at two or more locations, to form a series of small lakes in the park. The uppermost dam spanned the creek approximately in the middle of the park. This was the only dam ever constructed. The next lake downstream was to lie at the southern end of today’s park, with its dam at the location of the curve in today’s West Dexter Street. A third lake, still further downstream, was to have its dam near where Park Place runs today.

House-building in the newly-planned College Park development began in 1922. The Daughertys and the Lancasters built the first two homes, at 301 and 303 Dexter Drive. The architect for these first two houses and for many later ones in the neighborhood was D.B. Milner, a faculty member in the Dept. of Agriculture and a son of a former President of Texas A&M. The contractor for these houses and many others in College Park was Clarence Andrews. The Scoates home at 401 Dexter was built in 1924. At about this time, Dr. Clark built a concrete log cabin at 405 Dexter. Many more homes were soon under construction along Dexter Drive and West Dexter Drive, facing the park on either side. In addition to on-site new construction, more than a dozen old campus houses would be moved into the new neighborhood. This building boom attracted interest and publicity far outside the local community. The August 30, 1925, issue of the Dallas Morning News contained a feature article describing the growing College Park development.

By 1929, houses had reached the south edge of the park. Then the Depression hit, and all building activity came to a halt. Among the last houses built during this stage were those at 600 and 602 West Dexter, across the street from the south end of the park. The house at 602 West Dexter was built in late 1928, by Fred & Vera Brison. Vera Brison continued to live there until failing health forced her to move to a retirement apartment in 1992. (Much of the information about the history of this area was obtained in interviews with Mrs. Brison between 1984 and 1993; important additional information was supplied by the Lancaster family.) Next door, at 600 West Dexter, lived Ernest Langford and family. Professor Langford was Head of the TAMU School of Architecture for many years. He designed the first College Station City Hall, the building later occupied by Café Eccell until it was demolished in 2014.

In about 1937-38, Dr. Clark tried to revive sales of lots in the development. To encourage sales, he agreed to sell tracts of land in whatever location or size the purchaser wanted, regardless of the lot lines as originally drawn on the development lay-out. So when Dr. Clark received an offer for a tract of land that had originally been unplatted and intended as the location of a lake, he accepted the offer. Dr. Clark continued to sell tracts with boundaries that did not correspond at all to the originally laid-out lots. For some sales, Dr. Clark prepared deeds that did not list metes and bounds in the property descriptions; at least one deed described the property being sold merely as "all the previously unsold portion of Lot 6." This sort of haphazard procedure resulted in some small areas being overlooked, never sold or deeded. This has subsequently caused some confusion about property boundaries in the area. By this time, plans for the lakes had been abandoned. One dam was constructed, but the lake proved to be a breeding pond for mosquitoes. Tragically, a small child fell in the lake and drowned, sometime in the early 1930s. In 1940, that lake was drained and no others were built. The dam can still be seen in the park. The cut made to drain the lake is now spanned by Billy Goat Bridge.

Early-day residents of College Park recalled Dr. and Mrs. Clark as colorful individuals with strong personalities. Many years later, Mrs. Brison described Dr. Clark as "eccentric," commenting that "he liked to do everything his own way." As building resumed in the neighborhood, residents recognized the need to begin taking steps to incorporate as a city. A series of neighborhood meetings were held, most of them in the front parlor of the Brison residence at 602 West Dexter. Petitions were drawn up in 1938 and legal documents were prepared for the necessary steps in incorporation. For reasons now long-forgotten, Dr. Clark was strongly opposed to incorporation of the City of College Station. He initiated several court cases, attempting to block the proceedings. Even after the election was held and incorporation was agreed upon, Dr. Clark refused to cooperate with the newly-established city. At the same time, Mrs. Clark strenuously opposed efforts to drain the lake, even though it was generally agreed that the lake had become a public nuisance. On one memorable occasion, Mrs. Clark stood on the dam, waving a butcher knife, as work crews with heavy equipment waited to begin the work of cutting through the dam. These disagreements between the Clarks and the City led to a breakdown in communications, with several documents relating to the earliest plans for the development not being made available to the City until l940-41. Dr. and Mrs. Clark had no children. Ruth Clark died in 1952. Dr. Clark died 31 July - 1 August 1977 (not sure of exact date). He was born 11 Sept. 1886.

ln the meantime, construction sped up in the neighborhood. Many homes were built along Park Place in l938-39. At about this time, the A&M administration ordered faculty to move off campus. They were given until September 1, 1941 to find new residences. To aid in this, A&M offered to sell the on-campus houses to the faculty who were then living in them, if the faculty would find off-campus locations and pay the expense of moving the building to its new location. More than a dozen old campus houses were moved to the College Park area, where they remain as landmarks today. Examples of these old campus homes can be found today at 305, 400, 500, and 501 Fairview; and at 710, 1006, and 1102 Park Place; as well as at 201, 304, 400, 601, 603, 611, 710, 908, and 912 Montclair; and at 502 Kerry.

Construction has continued to the present day, so the area now forms virtually a historical museum of residential building styles for almost the entire 20th century. Now, some 90 years after the first establishment of the College Park neighborhood, many of the homes are occupied by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of their original owners. Besides these long-established residents, the neighborhood has become the home of many newly-arrived families. The shouts of playing children echo through the park and in the yards. Strolling families can often be seen on the streets in the area. Ancient trees – oaks, elms, pecans and cypress – overhang the streets, offering shade and calm through the changing seasons. As College Park approaches its century mark, its future looks bright. It was the cradle of the community we now know as College Station; and it is poised to lead the way into the community’s second hundred years.

Compiled by C.O. “Pat” Patterson, Jerry Cooper, Carol Edwards, and other College Park "old-timers"