Castle Heights

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Castle Heights, up in McLennan County. Now, most neighborhoods don't have much of a story to tell. A few streets, a few houses, somebody's initials on a deed.

Castle Heights, though. Castle Heights came into this world with intention. W.T.

Herrick and W.L. Wollett platted the place in 1923, and they didn't just lay out a grid and call it done. They named it for two things: a nearby landmark called Cottonland Castle, and the neighborhood's own elevation above the commercial district below.

You start a place with a castle in its name, you've already made a promise to the people who'll live there. Now, the design choices these men made were not subtle. Curved streets, for one.

Not the straight, sensible lines of the city grid below, but curves. Traffic circles. And the homes built there reached into the whole catalog of architectural revival styles, Tudor, Colonial, Georgian, Classical, Mediterranean.

Standing in that neighborhood, you might feel like you'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in four different centuries at once. For six years, Castle Heights didn't answer to anybody. It was its own independent village, and it voted to incorporate in September of 1939.

Then, in December of 1945, the City of Waco came calling and annexed the area. That's the thing about a place with a castle in its name. The city eventually wants it.

What those curved streets and revival-style homes represent, according to the marker, is a deliberate break from the urban grid, a thread connecting this one Waco neighborhood to national trends in suburban planning and development. A little village on a hill, shaped like nothing around it, and built to stay that way.

What the marker says

This historic Waco neighborhood exhibits distinctive design features. W.T. Herrick and W.L. Wollett platted Castle Heights in 1923, naming it for nearby Cottonland Castle and its elevation above the commercial district. Notable elements included curved streets, traffic circles, and excellent local examples of architectural revival styles such as Tudor, Colonial, Georgian, Classical and Mediterranean. For six years Castle Heights was an independent village, voting to incorporate in Sept. 1939; the City of Waco annexed the area in Dec. 1945. The cohesive collection of early and mid-Twentieth Century homes reflects a break with the existing urban grid, and links Castle Heights to national trends of suburban planning and development. (2008)