DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Stephen J. Hay School, standing right here in Dallas County. Now, some men leave a mark on a city.
Stephen J. Hay left about a dozen. He came up from Georgia in 1887, landed in Dallas, and before long he was an executive at the Texas Paper Company.
But paper wasn't going to hold this man's attention for long — not when there was a city to build. Hay served eight years on the Dallas Board of Education. Eight years learning the machinery of city governance, and then in 1907, Dallas did something it had never done before.
It scrapped the old ward system entirely and elected its very first mayor under a brand-new mayor-council government. The man they chose? Stephen J.
Hay. And when Dallas handed him that job, he didn't ease into it. Him and four commissioners got to work, and I mean work.
They commissioned the first city plan the city had ever seen, drawn up by a man named George Kessler. They passed a bond election to help establish Southern Methodist University. They oversaw construction of White Rock Dam and Reservoir, the Houston Street Viaduct, a new city hall, a hospital, fire stations.
Dallas in those years was practically being assembled from scratch, and Hay was right there with the hammer. The voters reelected him in 1909, which tells you something about how the city felt about all that activity. After his time as mayor, Hay stayed prominent — banking, insurance, the chamber of commerce.
The man had range. He lived until 1916, and by then modern Dallas bore his fingerprints all over it. So when the city put up a school here in 1921 and called it the Stephen J.
Hay Elementary School, nobody was likely to argue. Now, in those early years the school was nothing fancy — frame classrooms, outhouses. The bones of something, not yet the thing itself.
Then came 1926. A bond election delivered the funds, and architect Thomas J. Galbraith drew up plans for a sixteen-room brick schoolhouse.
Galbraith knew his way around Dallas — he'd designed residences and churches throughout the city — and he'd done schools out in Royse City, Hillsboro, Coleman, and Cuero. Contractors Spearman and Sons put it all together, and what they raised here was something worth stopping for. Two stories of red brick.
A center block with flanking wings reaching out on either side. A Tudor Revival entrance that announces itself with some authority. Cast stone panels and quoins, multi-light steel windows.
The building was designed to hold four hundred students — a full, thriving school by any measure of the era. But here's where the story takes one of those quiet, slow turns. By the 1960s, enrollment had dwindled to less than half of that intended four hundred.
The school that was built for a crowd ran well below capacity for years, until 1978, when it stopped being a school in the traditional sense altogether and became the site of Dallas I.S.D. offices. And yet — the building didn't fade out. It came back around.
That same red-brick structure, the one Galbraith designed and Spearman and Sons built, later became the first campus of the Irma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School. A building raised in the name of a man who helped build a city, repurposed to build the next generation. That's the kind of ending a marker can't quite plan for — but it sure does land right.
What the marker says
This site commemorates a significant civic and business leader. Georgia native Stephen J. Hay (1864-1916) migrated to Dallas in 1887 and became an executive of the Texas Paper Company. He served eight years on the Dallas Board of Education and in 1907 was the first mayor elected to a new mayor-council government that replaced the ward system. Hay was reelected in 1909, and as mayor he and four commissioners oversaw major city projects, including the first city plan, designed by George Kessler; passage of a bond election to help establish Southern Methodist University; and construction of White Rock Dam and Reservoir, the Houston Street Viaduct, and a new city hall, hospital and fire stations. Hay took a leading role in the development of modern Dallas and was later prominent in banking, insurance, and the chamber of commerce. Stephen J. Hay Elementary School, established here in 1921, initially consisted of frame classrooms and outhouses. A bond election paid for a new 16-room brick schoolhouse in 1926 planned by architect Thomas J. Galbraith and built by contractors Spearman and Sons. Galbraith designed residences and churches in Dallas, and schools in Royse City, Hillsboro, Coleman and Cuero. The Hay School building is a two-story red brick building with a center block and flanking wings, prominent Tudor Revival entrance, cast stone panels and quoins, and multi-light steel windows. The school was designed to accommodate 400 students, but enrollment dwindled to less than half its intended capacity by the 1960s. The school operated below capacity until 1978, when it became the site of Dallas I.S.D. offices. The building was later the first campus of the Irma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School. (2007)