Woman's Club of Aransas County Building

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Woman's Club of Aransas County Building. Now, most buildings just get built. Somebody draws up plans, somebody swings a hammer, and there it stands.

But this building in Rockport, it came a different way. A more interesting way. The kind of way that makes you think somebody in that club had a real eye for opportunity.

It starts in March of 1948, when a woman named Mrs. Fred B. Hunt issued a call.

A call to organize. What came together was the Woman's Civic Club of Aransas County, and right out of the gate, one of their major early activities was figuring out how to get a permanent home for the organization. A real building.

Not borrowed space, not a rented hall. Something that belonged to them. Now here's where the story takes a turn.

Later that same year, the recreation building for Humble Oil Company employees over at Ingleside went up for auction. And that club, not long off the ground, put in a bid. That bid was accepted.

But here's the part worth savoring. That building was not in Rockport. It was in Ingleside.

So how do you move a building? Well, you move it the way anybody sensible moves a building in coastal Texas. You cut it into three sections, you load it onto a barge, and you bring it across the water.

Three sections. By barge. To Rockport.

And once it arrived, what you had was something worth keeping. A hip roof, a rectangular plan, a five-bay entrance porch held up by stone columns. Banks of paired windows running along each side.

And that Austin stone veneer giving the whole thing a presence, a permanence, like it had always meant to be right there. Somebody called a meeting in March of 1948, and by the end of that year, a building was moving across the water toward a new life. That's not just civic organizing.

That's a story.

What the marker says

In March 1948, Mrs. Fred B. Hunt issued a call to organize the Woman’s Civic Club. One of the club’s major early activities was financing a permanent building for the organization. Later that year the recreation building for Humble Oil Company employees at Ingleside went up for auction, and the club put in a bid that was accepted. The building was then brought to Rockport in three sections by barge. The hip roof, rectangular plan building features a five-bay entrance porch with stone columns, banks of paired windows along each side and an Austin stone veneer. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2009