Kilgore College Administration Building

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Kilgore College Administration Building. Now, you want to talk about a community with nerve, let's talk about Kilgore, Texas. The year is 1935.

The Great Depression has its hands around the throat of just about every town in America. Money is scarce, confidence is scarcer, and nobody is out there volunteering to take on new financial burdens. Nobody, that is, except the people of Kilgore.

See, East Texas had something going on underground. The oil field boom had come roaring through, and Kilgore residents looked at all that energy, all that activity, and they decided: we need a junior college. And then they did something remarkable.

They voted to support it. Right there in the middle of the Depression, they voted yes. That takes a particular kind of stubborn optimism, and Texas has never been short on that.

Now, you can't open a college without somewhere to hold classes, so while the main building was being worked out, students sat down in the high school. But the plan was already in motion. Help came from the Public Works Administration, and with that financial aid in hand, the administration building was completed in 1936.

The design came from a San Antonio firm, Phelps and Dewees, and what they gave Kilgore was a genuine piece of art moderne architecture. Clean lines, confident form, a building that said: we are here, and we are staying. And staying it has.

That administration building still stands today, a good example of what Phelps and Dewees set down, and a quiet monument to the people who said yes when every sensible instinct said wait.

What the marker says

In response to the East Texas oil field boom, yet in the midst of the Great Depression, Kilgore residents voted to support the establishment of a junior college in 1935. Classes were held in the high school until this building was completed in 1936 with financial aid from the Public Works Administration. Designed by the San Antonio firm of Phelps & Dewees, the Kilgore College administration building remains a good example of art moderne architecture. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990