Town of Needville

In 1903 Needville had a one-teacher White school with ninety-seven pupils and a one-teacher Black school with forty-five. The Round Hall, built for dances by 1910, was the town's social center until 1950. A county fair ran here from 1927 to 1931 before debt and the Depression ended it, and State Highway 36 gave the town an all-weather road in 1932. Needville incorporated in 1944 and formed its own school district in 1946-47. N. A. Allen Elementary was built for Black students in 1960, and the district was fully integrated by 1966.

What the plaque says

Town of Needville Had beginning in 1892 when settler August Schendel opened general store, here, on his land. Blacksmith shop, cotton gin, and room for post office had been added by 1894, when Schendel was appointed first postmaster. He suggested naming place "Needmore" because it needed more of everything, but another town already had that name. Slowly village became trade center. First church service was held 1891; school opened by 1897. Early economy, based on stockraising and farming, was altered radically with discovery of oil, natural gas, and sulphur, 1920s-30s. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 14 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 20 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 35 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.
• The Menil Collection — 35 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.

More markers nearby

• Needville Methodist Church — 0.4 mi
• Concord Cemetery — 5.2 mi
• Snake Creek Cemetery and Church — 5.8 mi
• Beasley — 8.2 mi