Site of Cost School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Site of Cost School, out in Gonzales County. Now, before a school can close its doors for good, it has to open them. And before it can open them, somebody has to build the thing.

That's the story we're talkin' about today, and it starts, as so many Texas stories do, with a community that didn't even go by its final name yet. Back in the 1890s, this stretch of Gonzales County was known as Oso. The families living in the Cost community, as it would come to be called, sent their children to area schools tied to White School District No. 38 and County School District No. 38 and a half to the east.

Two separate districts, and the kids in the middle just trying to learn their letters. By 1903, the county stepped up and built the Cost Community School. Still, some students were making the trek to Oso School, sitting about two miles west of Cost.

So the schooling situation was, let's say, a work in progress. Then 1915 rolls around, and officials created the Cost Common School District No. 22. A proper district at last.

And once you've got a proper district, you need a proper school. So the trustees, R.N. Hester, B.L.

Dikes, Otto Luescher, Ernst Schieberle, and Samuel Lester, they weren't going to settle for just any building. They hired noted architect Henry T. Phelps to design something worth remembering.

The land itself was given and sold to the district by Schieberle and Dikes, two of those very same trustees. Now that's putting your money where your schoolhouse is. For the construction contract, a Gonzales man named Fred Meisenhelder won the bid.

And on October 2, 1916, the two-story brick schoolhouse opened its doors. One hundred and twenty-five students walked in that first day, ready for grades one through ten. May of 1918 brought the first graduating class through those same doors on their way out.

A milestone. And over the next several years, the school kept growing. The curriculum stretched beyond the basics to include music, homemaking, manual training, which the marker kindly explains means shop, and athletics.

In 1948, a wood-frame lunchroom facility was added to the grounds. But the very next year, 1949, the Cost District was annexed into the Gonzales Independent School District. And students began making the transition to Gonzales schools.

The handwriting, you might say, was on the chalkboard. Cost School closed its doors in May of 1959. And then, the year after that, a local property owner bought the school and used the bricks from that two-story schoolhouse to construct a home across the road.

The building that Fred Meisenhelder raised, that Henry T. Phelps designed, that one hundred and twenty-five kids filed into on a fall morning in 1916, became somebody's house. Just across the road.

For many years after, community groups kept gathering in that old wood-frame lunchroom for meetings, holding on to something. But today, the marker tells us plainly, Cost School is only a memory. Some memories, though, get a marker.

What the marker says

In the 1890s, children of families living in the Cost community, originally known as Oso, attended area schools that were part of the White School District No. 38 and the County School District No. 38-1/2 to the east. By 1903, the county built the Cost Community School, although some students attended Oso School about two miles west of Cost. In 1915, officials created the Cost Common School District No. 22. Trustees R.N. Hester, B.L. Dikes, Otto Luescher, Ernst Schieberle and Samuel Lester hired noted architect Henry T. Phelps to design a new building to house grades one through ten at this site on land given and sold to the district by Schieberle and Dikes. Gonzales resident Fred Meisenhelder won the contract for construction, and the two-story brick schoolhouse opened its doors to 125 students on October 2, 1916. In May 1918, the first students graduated from the school. During the next several years, the school curriculum expanded from basic subjects to include music, homemaking, manual training (shop) and athletics. The district added a wood-frame lunchroom facility in 1948. The next year, the Cost District was annexed into the Gonzales Independent School District, and students began making the transition to Gonzales schools. Cost School closed its doors in May 1959, and the next year a local property owner bought it and used the bricks to construct a home across the road. For many years, community groups continued to use the former lunchroom for meetings, but today the Cost School is only a memory. (2006)