Travis College Hill Addition

The name hides a school that was called a college. In the history Louis and Kay Moore wrote for Garland, Garland College was a subscription school founded in 1887 that taught primary, high school and college levels; voters created a school district in 1901 that held classes in the same building. The Moores say the Hill refers to the school's place on one of the town's higher elevations. Their research began in the late 1990s, when they fought to keep Kay's childhood home from being razed for church parking. In 2017 the district became Garland's first National Register listing.

What the plaque says

Travis College Hill Addition Between 1910 and 1920, the population of Garland increased from about 800 to more than 1,400. Accompanying the growth of the town was a plan by the Eastern Texas Traction Company to build an interurban electric trolley line. The route, connecting Dallas to Greenville, would have run along Mewshaw Avenue (later Avenue D), as the southern border of the Travis College Hill Addition, which was platted in 1913. The neighborhood was created as an addition to the interurban line developments, in part, to attract commerce and population near the line. The 73-acre property belonged to Garland pioneers Richard and Sallie (Walker) Wyatt. Developer R.O. Travis worked with Richard Wyatt to oversee the establishment of the addition through the Interurban Land Company. The neighborhood adjoined Garland College, giving the residential addition the name of Interurban Land Company's Travis College Hill. Large lots and proximity to the proposed trolley line helped attract businesses and homeowners. At the center of the addition was the Garland Avenue Thoroughfare, now South 11th Street. The interurban line was cancelled due to the bankruptcy of the Eastern Texas Traction Company, and the chance to renew the project was lost with the coming of World War I and the Model T automobile. However, the area had already become an integral part of Garland, and has featured the homes of many of the city's civic, religious, commercial and educational leaders. The houses have also been used for numerous meetings and events as Garland has grown from a small town to a large city. Today, Travis College Hill Addition reflects the architecture and history of the early development of Garland. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 11 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 11 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 11 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 12 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Garland — steps away
• First Methodist Church of Garland — steps away
• First Christian Church of Garland — 0.2 mi
• Garland — 0.4 mi