American Women's League Chapter House - Calvert, TX - Woman's Clubs on Waymarking.com

As barbershop quartets serenaded Calvert’s citizens with four-part harmony standards, many of the town’s women were beginning to want more than cotton aprons and domestic responsibility. They founded their own chapter of the American Woman’s League, a national organization with roots in California that offered women access to culture, art and education. In 1909, the architectural craftsman-style Katy Hamman-Stricker Women’s Heritage Center was built in Calvert as the first AWL chapter house in Texas and one of 38 constructed in the nation.

Wikipedia

The building was constructed in 1909 but its role changed thirty years later when it became the town library.

The American Woman's League (AWL) was created in 1907 by the magazine publisher E.G. Lewis, as a way to spread women's suffrage as well as gain new salespersons for his magazine business. The aim of the AWL was to promote educational, cultural and business opportunities for women. He planned a network of institutions and businesses to serve women that included correspondence schools, postal libraries, savings banks and institutions to provide for the homeless and for orphans. He provided funding to have chapter houses built in small towns across the United States, each intended to provide a community center for cultural, educational and social events and create employment opportunities for women. Fifty percent of the profit from magazine subscriptions was funnelled back into the AWL.

Katy Hamman-Stricker led a movement to erect a League of Woman's meeting house in Calvert, Texas. She was the daughter of Confederate General William H. Hamman who turned his attention after the American Civil War to land and railroad speculation. He stood as a candidate in the race for governor of Texas in 1878 and 1880 under the Greenback Party banner, but lost on both occasions. Both Stricker and her husband, jeweler Herman L. Stricker, were business, civic and social leaders.

At first, the one room building with its small kitchen area served as the league's clubhouse. The building's architectural style was in the tradition of the Prairie School, with a low gabled roof. By 1939, the AWL had been discontinued and the Calvert Woman's Club purchased the building for use as a library.