Buda School

The 1928 schoolhouse came from the drawing board of Roy L. Thomas, an Austin architect who lived from 1886 to 1968 and practiced across Central Texas from the 1920s through the 1950s. His work covered homes, schools, churches, apartments and service stations. The school's first graduating class, in 1910, had six students. A 2017 bond paid for a new Buda Elementary, and the historic campus stopped operating as a school after the 2018 to 2019 year. Thomas's papers, with drawings, job files and photographs, are held at the University of Texas at Austin's Alexander Architectural Archives.

What the plaque says

Buda School THE BUDA SCHOOL SYSTEM ORGANIZED FROM THE CONSOLIDATION OF SEVERAL 19TH CENTURY RURAL SCHOOLS, INCLUDING ELM GROVE (LARGEST SCHOOL IN HAYS COUNTY IN 1876), GOFORTH, TURNERSVILLE, MOUNTAIN CITY, ANTIOCH, SCIENCE HALL AND KELLYVILLE. IN 1881, THE YEAR CORNELIA TRIMBLE PLATTED BUDA, MARY ADAMS ESTABLISHED THE FIRST SCHOOL ON PROPERTY EAST OF THE RAILROAD TRACK ALONG RAILROAD STREET AND SERVED AS ITS TEACHER. IN 1885, SCHOOL TRUSTEES ERECTED A TWO-STORY WOODEN SCHOOL BUILDING AT THE CURRENT SITE. IN 1908, TRUSTEES REPLACED IT WITH A LARGER, TWO-STORY BRICK BUILDING TO ACCOMMODATE BUDA'S GROWING POPULATION. WHEN THAT STRUCTURE BURNED IN 1928, BUILDERS COMPLETED THE PRESENT MISSION STYLE, ONE-STORY SCHOOLHOUSE, DESIGNED BY AUSTIN ARCHITECT ROY L. THOMAS, WHICH INCORPORATED THE STANDING WALLS OF THE PREVIOUS BUILDING, STILL VISIBLE IN THE AUDITORIUM SPACE. THE AUDITORIUM WAS SIGNIFICANT TO PARENTS AND STUDENTS, HOSTING SCHOOL EVENTS BEFORE TRANSFORMATION TO A COMMUNITY ROOM. FROM 1931 TO 1945, BOB BARTON, SR. SERVED AS SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT, IN ADDITION TO HIS OTHER DUTIES AS BUS DRIVER, TEACHER AND COACH. HE AND HIS WIFE, MARIETTA, AIDED IN THE FIGHT FOR SCHOOL INTEGRATION, WHICH BEGAN WHEN THE CITY'S MEXICAN AMERICAN SCHOOL CLOSED IN 1948. AFRICAN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WERE ABLE TO ATTEND THE MAIN SCHOOL IN 1956, WITH GRADES ONE THROUGH EIGHT INTEGRATED BY 1961. BUDA, KYLE AND WIMBERLEY SCHOOLS JOINED IN 1967 TO FORM HAYS CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT (WIMBERLEY HAS SINCE REFORMED A SEPARATE DISTRICT). TODAY, THIS SCHOOL, NOW BUDA ELEMEN-TARY, CONTINUES TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY AS AN EDUCATIONAL INSTITU-TION AND GATHERING PLACE, MORE THAN 100 YEARS AFTER IT FIRST OPENED. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McKinney Falls State Park — 9.9 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Barton Springs Pool — 13 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 14 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 14 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.

More markers nearby

• Buda — steps away
• Antioch Colony — 0.4 mi
• Barton Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• Manchaca United Methodist Church — 4.0 mi