The Kinkaid School

Margaret Kinkaid was a granddaughter of Johnson Calhoun Hunter, one of the Old Three Hundred, and the Handbook says her first seven pupils came in 1904; she later preferred 1906, after closing briefly for the birth of her second son. The 1924 board included Robert Lee Blaffer, Harry C. Wiess, Edwin L. Neville, William L. Clayton and Burke Baker. Her son William came as principal when the high school opened in 1929, and the 1938 graduating class of five girls was the first to go from Kinkaid to college. She died after a car accident in December 1951.

What the plaque says

The Kinkaid School The oldest private non-parochial school in Houston, the Kinkaid School was started in 1906 by Margaret Hunter Kinkaid. Unable to teach in the public schools because of a regulation prohibiting married women instructors, Mrs. Kinkaid began teaching students in her home at the corner of San Jacinto and Elgin streets. The first pupils were seven kindergarten students who met in her dining room. As the school grew, the Kinkaid Cottage was raised and a new first floor was constructed to provide classroom space. In order to meet increased enrollment demands and administrative responsibilities, a school board was organized in 1924 and plans were begun for a new facility at the corner of Richmond and Graustark. A high school program was added soon after. With the continued leadership of Mrs. Kinkaid and the development of innovative educational programs adapted from her ideas and observations, the school became nationally known. Mrs. Kinkaid retired shortly before her death in 1951 and was succeeded by John H. Cooper, under who administration the present campus was developed. A leader in quality education, the Kinkaid School has been the alma mater of many prominent business and professional leaders. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 6.8 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 6.9 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 7.4 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 8.0 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Bellaire Streetcar Line — 4.0 mi
• Bellaire — 4.1 mi
• Camp Logan — 5.2 mi
• Bayou Bend — 5.5 mi