Survey identifies historical place around the City

The city of Seguin is chock full of history and historical buildings. So much more than city officials knew until a recent historical survey discovered more than 50 buildings that are eligible for historical designations.

For the past several months, historians from Cox McLain Environmental Consulting began to survey Seguin to determine the eligibility of properties for local, state and national historic designation within downtown and its surrounding areas. After a year of waiting — and 40 years since the city’s last survey — they returned to share their results with city officials.

“Seguin currently has six local landmarks in the reconnaissance survey area and three individual properties listed in the national register,” Cox McLain Environmental Consulting Historic Preservation Program Manager Emily Reed said. “As a result of this survey, we have identified an additional 35 resources that meet the criteria for local landmark designation and then 29 that also meet the criteria for the national register listing.”

Locations or “resources” that were surveyed by the historians were broken down into three categories of priority range high, medium and low, based on their historical significance.

One of the resources to make it to the high priority list was a freighter depot developed in 1910. The building has long been abandoned and has received numerous attempts at remodeling. However, due to its historical significance, it has been deemed a high priority, Cox McLain Environmental Consulting Senior Architectural Historian Sandy Shannon said.

“What is important about this building is freight depots are not frequently standing still,” Shannon said. “So, it’s notable that Seguin still has this building. They were normally constructed of wood and were not designed to last. So this tells us that the Southern Pacific Railroad Company thought of Seguin as a very important railroad hub.”

In addition to documenting the historic footprint of the downtown area, the duo also managed to uncover new mysteries of the area.

“We found that the property at 212 East Court Street has a potential association with the African American community,” Reed said. “It has an association with Dr. Clarence Friday, who was a black physician. At the level of research that we did, we weren’t able to fully determine the extent of what could have been an African American commercial district in this area.”

Although the survey provides evidence to move toward getting historic locations designated as landmarks it is not the only measure that needs to be taken.

“As part of the survey, we make recommendations for things that may be eligible,” Shannon said. “So that’s sort of step one and actually listing something at the local, state or national level is a separate process, so that’s step two. Locally designated resources can have regulatory benefits, maybe some tax benefits depending on the jurisdiction and then state and national designation is largely honorary.”

The research done by the historians was not restricted to buildings. Any structure or location that is about 40 to 50 years old or more was eligible for the survey.

“We’re looking at not just buildings, but also structures, objects, sites, districts, those are all things we call resources,“ she said. “Surveys involve both fieldwork and also research. So when we go into the fieldwork, we’re documenting the exterior properties or photos and we’re recording key information about each property, such as the architectural style, alterations that are visible from the exterior, that sort of thing.”

The survey was broken up into two separate parts. The first is called the reconnaissance survey which is a detailed look at the downtown area of Seguin and the windshield survey which is a more relaxed look at locations just outside of the reconnaissance area.

“The reconnaissance survey is a more comprehensive look at a defined survey area,” Reed said. “So everything within that boundary, if it’s historic age, is going to be documented with The Texas Historical Commission. The windshield survey was an area outside of the recon survey area where we just drove around and looked at properties not documenting all of them but making note.”

Although the large majority of resources surveyed were buildings, the duo’s data show a history-rich downtown.

“Most of everything that we documented were buildings,” Shannon said. “But looking at the data, we had just under 200 parcels in our survey area, we identified that 80% of those were historic age, which we defined as having one or more resources built in 1973 or earlier, we identified 6% of our parcels were not historic age, and then we had 14% that were either vacant lots or parking lots.”

To qualify for review, locations within the designated areas were judged on factors like the time they were built as well as the purpose they served. Some of these may include functions pertaining to agriculture, transportation and architectural style, Shannon said.

“When we are talking about recommending something to be eligible for listing we are defining a period of significance and an area of significance,” she said. “The period of significance is just the timeframe during which a resource achieved historical significance. So it can be a specific date or a date range. The area of significance is sort of the historic theme under which the property is associated.”

To view the original story from Seguin Gazette, please click here.

Joe Martin is a staff writer for the Seguin Gazette. You can e-mail him at joe.martin@seguingazette.com .