Site of Polytechnic Institute

By 1892, the Handbook of Texas says, Midlothian had between 600 and 800 people and at least twenty-five businesses in its district, among them two cotton gins, two general stores, a drugstore, a hardware and farm-implement store, a livery stable, a lumberyard, a saddle and harness shop, a hotel, a bakery, a barbershop, a blacksmith and wagon-repair shop and a weekly paper called the Visitor. The Polytechnic Academy, a private boarding school stressing the fine arts, was one of those institutions. The Handbook adds that it became part of the public school system in 1903.

What the plaque says

Site of Polytechnic Institute Founded in 1883 by W.W. Works (1856-1895), Polytechnic Institute was a private, coeducational school. A respected educator and native of this area, Works left here in 1888 to attend the University of Texas. When he returned in 1892, local stockholders erected a two-story school building at this site. After Works died, the facility became Whitten Institute, with the Rev. Thomas G. Whitten as president. It was also operated as Midlothian College. In 1907-08, the building was dismantled, and the property was acquired by former stockholder J.C. Kimmel. In 1915, his widow gave it to the city for use as a park. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 11 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 11 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 23 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 24 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• Midlothian Presbyterian Church — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Midlothian — 0.8 mi
• Site of Old Hawkins Springs — 1.2 mi
• Sardis Cemetery — 6.2 mi