Cultural Activities Center

The plaque names Nora Lee Wendland as the idea's source, and the Temple Daily Telegram's obituary of Raye Virginia Allen names a second founder. Allen, a generation younger, chaired the first annual Festival of Arts in 1958, and within a year it had become the Cultural Activities Center, with Allen and Wendland in early leadership. For the mid-1970s building campaign she turned to Nancy Hanks, a family friend from Gatesville who had worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and later led the National Endowment for the Arts.

What the plaque says

Cultural Activities Center Organized in 1958, the Cultural Activities Center (CAC) in Temple is among the oldest multi-disciplinary arts organizations in Texas. During the 1950s, there was a national upsurge in the arts, which coincided with Temple's post-war population growth and community history of support for the arts. Among the women responsible for starting the center was Nora Lee Wendland (1896-1988), president of the City Federation of Women's Clubs and a classically trained violinist. She envisioned a "festival of the arts" and established a Cultural Arts Committee, which organized the first festival in April 1958. The committee expanded that year and began working with citizens and local groups to organize programs for Temple. The seven original groups were the Youth Activity Center (Children's Library and Employment Agency), Old Central Players, the League of Contemporary Arts, the Artisans' Guild, the Temple Camera Club, the Community Chorus, and the Temple Civic Orchestra. The CAC was housed in a variety of locations, including a former church building from 1965-77, and its replacement, the Azalee Marshall Cultural Activities Center, which was dedicated in 1978. The contemporaries, the CAC's service organization, largely operated outside of the organization's building, visiting schools where members staged arts programs. As a groundbreaking institution, the CAC became a model for similar centers in other communities. It also spun off the Temple Civic Theatre and the Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum. Today, the Cultural Activities Center remains at the forefront of artistic activities in Temple and throughout Bell County. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 2.2 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Mother Neff State Park — 16 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 28 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.

More markers nearby

• Claudia Potter, M.D. — 0.9 mi
• Cyrus Maxwell Campbell — 0.9 mi
• City Federation of Women's Clubs — 1.3 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Temple — 1.6 mi