A Texas Historical Marker tells:
In 1927, Arcadia, Alta Loma and Algoa schools combined to form the Santa Fe Consolidated School District, named for the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad which linked the towns. Architect Harry D. Payne designed a new high school for the district in 1928, to be built about halfway between Arcadia and Alta Loma. With a bond of $42,000, work on the school began. The Spanish Colonial style building features a clay tile roof, brick exterior, and decorative door surrounds. Six rooms and a combination auditorium and library were planned for 175 students. The new school opened on Oct. 22, 1928, and served as the district’s high school until 1959.
The following is from the University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, Texas Historical Commission. Historic Marker Application: Santa Fe Consolidated High School, August 28, 2013 (accessed October 31, 2018)
1928 Original Santa Fe High School Building
I. CONTEXT
In 1873, construction on the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad began, with the aim to connect the port of Galveston with the inland cities in the north and west. The railroad brought growth and people to the mostly unsettled swampy areas of Galveston county, such as to the town of Arcadia built in 1890. Not far away, in 1893, the town of Alta Loma was created along the railroad. The town of Algoa was created later in 1897. The area including the three adjacent towns was advertised as having much real estate and good land for farming, especially fruits.
In 1912, four school districts adjacent along the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad- Algoa, Arcadia, Alta Loma, and Hitchcock- talked of consolidating. Each district had their own small schools, but because of money and space constraints, none of them was able to provide more than ten grades of education, if that. The districts wanted to provide eleven years of instruction, which was then the amount required for state accreditation. The creation of the Santa Fe Consolidated High School was the first sign of a growing unity between the small towns of Algoa, Arcadia, and Alta Loma (Hitchcock withdrew at the last minute), and ultimately the unwitting first step in the creation of the city of Santa Fe.
II. OVERVIEW
On October 7, 1927, the Arcadia and Alta Loma school districts voted to request that the County Judge hold an election to consolidate the two districts under the name Santa Fe, after the Santa Fe Railroad (currently part of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway). The consolidation proposal was approved in said election on November 19, 1927, and a second election added the Algoa school district as well. Harry D. Payne, AIA, was architect for a high school building for the new school district. His original floor plan is dated January 14, 1928, and the building was to be placed about halfway between
the towns of Arcadia and Alta Loma on Highway 58 (today known as Highway 6). With a bond of $42,000, work on the new high school began.
Construction was headed by Ned Hunter, Sr. It was planned to be 35 feet long by 61 feet wide, and about large enough to accommodate 175 students.6 The style of the building, much like the architectural style promoted by the Santa Fe Railroad, had a Spanish/Southwestern/Indian theme. With its Mediterranean hipped roofs in reddish-tan tile and raked-face tapestry of red-brown brick, the long and compact rectangular building was a very widely admired example of Spanish colonial design. There are four entrances to the building: two on the opposite sides that lead directly to the main hallway and two in the front that led from the horseshoe driveway. All four of the double-doors were
topped with semicircular fanlights above, and each door had six panes of glass. It made efficient use of its interior space, containing six classrooms (including a science lab and a homemaking room), restrooms, an office, a janitor's closet, a book room, and a combination library-auditorium-study hall. The auditorium had 175 wooden opera seats, every other one with a folding arm that could be used as a desk, and a stage that was well-equipped due to the efforts of the first student body that used it. The new high school opened its doors and began classes on October 22, 1928.
The building served as the Santa Fe Consolidated School District's high school for 31 years, until a new high school building was built in 1959. In those 31 years, the size of the graduating class grew from six to fifty-three, and the facilities and opportunities grew with the student body. By September of 1931, three short years later, the high school was fully accredited by the state. The school district contained forty-nine square miles which was covered by a single school bus. The first bus driver was John Shannon, who drove a second-hand bus that was rather too small. The next driver, Fred Netter, was well loved and long employed. He had three stops: Trafton's Store in Algoa, Daura's store
in Arcadia, and Jordan's Store in Alta Loma.
In 1939 a small two-roomed wooden building was moved from the Arcadia schoolhouse to the high school. It was used as a woodshop and ag barn, then later as classrooms. Since, for several years, there had been no gymnasium, people would volunteer with their tractors and level the fields behind the high school for use as basketball and tennis courts. In 1940 an $18,000 bond was passed for a gymnasium-auditorium, and the building was finished in January 1941 to the west of the main school building. The first game in the new gymnasium was played on February 6, 1941. The building contained regulation-sized basketball, volleyball, tennis, and handball courts, a large stage, bleachers lining opposite walls that could hold several hundred people, and dressing rooms with hot and cold showers. Incidentally, this was around the time of the creation of a six-man football team in 1941. In 1947, the first eleven-man football team from Santa Fe was fielded.
A two-room building was added to the district east of the high school in the summer of 1947 for use as a junior high school. This was the start of a trend wherein younger students attended the consolidated campus instead of the three different schoolhouses in the three different towns. Before long, all grade levels would be as such. In 1948, after much debate and several false starts, voters approved the creation of Santa Fe Independent School District, making more adequate funding possible.
After Camp Wallace (in the modern-day location of Jack Brooks Park) closed in 1946, some of the mobile buildings used there were sold to the school district. Starting in the 1948-1949 school year, the high school came into possession of 7 Camp Wallace buildings: one used as a homemaking cottage between the high school and the gym; a longer storehouse building standing behind the school that contained two classrooms, a choir and storage room; football dressing rooms east of the football field; a woodshop and teacher's apartment on the south side of Highway 61 (later home of the first public library); and a bus barn farther east along the highway. In 1951, the two classrooms in the building behind the high school were converted into the first lunchroom, and the storage area was converted into a kitchen.
In the fall of 1954, the Santa Fe Central Elementary School was opened not far from the high school at 4133 Warpath Avenue, freeing space formerly occupied by the sixth-through-eighth grades. The two-room building that once served that purpose was thereafter used as a science department and commercial building. In the year of '57-'58, two rooms were added to the north side.
In the summer before the 1957-1958 school year, the wooden bleachers on the home side of the football field were replaced with much nicer steel bleachers with a covered press box. The small wooden building taken from Arcadia in 1939, was used as a band hall starting in 1954, for the band which was created two years prior. In 1959 a new “pink brick” high school building was built on Warpath in the space between the elementary school and the football field, at the address 4135 Warpath Avenue. School began there Sept. 8, 1959, and the smaller facility on Highway 6 was demoted to being the Junior High school for 7th and 8th grade. It continued to be the junior high until the creation
of the white brick high school on Warpath at 4132 Warpath Avenue, after which the pink brick building became the junior high.
The 1928 high school building at 13304 Highway 6 was used for storage for a while, and later became an administration building, and the four-room building to the east became the tax office. During this time, the interiors of the buildings were remodeled. The two front doors and front windows of the main building were closed, and only the side entrances are open. Recently, the Central Elementary school on Warpath, now called the Cowan Education Center, took over the responsibilities of the administration and tax office buildings. The 1928 building is now in use as a museum run by the Santa Fe Historical Foundation, dedicated to preserving the history of the Santa Fe School District. The gymnasium, or “Alamo” as it is fondly known, is still in use today.
III. SIGNIFICANCE
The Santa Fe Consolidated High School building is one of the oldest enduring buildings in the Santa Fe area. It was part of the first consolidated school district in Galveston County, and with its mostly unchanged exterior showcasing beautiful Spanish Colonial design, is one of the handsomest structures ever built in the area. Harry D. Payne, its architect, was a noted designer of schools. He expanded the Spanish Colonial design and plan at Lolita, and used its general plan, with a neo-Georgian exterior, at Deer Park. Most importantly, it brought together several small communities and led to their unification into the city of Santa Fe in 1978.