Zavala Elementary School

Lorenzo de Zavala came to Texas an exile from a long Mexican career. Born in Yucatán in 1788, he founded newspapers for democratic reform and was jailed for it from 1814 to 1817, teaching himself English and medicine in prison. He sat in the Spanish Cortes in 1821, in Mexico's first congresses and Senate, governed the state of Mexico and was treasury secretary in 1829. In 1829 he received an empresario grant for 500 families in southeast Texas. Sent to Paris as minister in 1834, he resigned when Santa Anna seized dictatorial power and reached Texas in July 1835.

What the plaque says

Zavala Elementary School In the 1930s, a rapidly growing Latino population caused the joint decision of the Austin Independent School District and Austin City Council to plan a separate facility for children attending Metz Elementary School. Austin architects Giesecke and Harris and San Antonio builders M. C. Falbo & Sons were chosen to build a 12-room brick schoolhouse in December 1935. The $42,935 cost was paid for entirely through federal Public Works Administration (PWA) funds. In 1936, as Texas commemorated its centennial of independence from Mexico, the school was dedicated to Lorenzo de Zavala, the only native of Mexico to sign the Texas declaration of independence and vice-president of the Republic of Texas. He had died in 1836. The school opened in the fall and was officially dedicated on October 21, 1936. In March 1938, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt approved another PWA project, Santa Rita Courts, as the first federal housing project in the nation. The subsidized housing project was built directly east of the school, with Giesecke and Harris and Falbo & Sons selected for its construction. In March 1939, a request to the school board to build an addition to the school to accommodate new students culminated in additional PWA funding. Santa Rita Courts were completed in June 1939, and a companion project, Chalmers Court, was finished to the west in September. Zavala's enrollment expanded again, and in the 1940s, Zavala was one of four Austin schools determined to be excessively overcrowded; another addition was completed in 1947. Zavala Elementary became an anchor for federal programs in the area. The school continues to serve the educational and community needs of the neighborhood. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — 0.7 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.9 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 1.0 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.7 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• The Herrera Family — 0.3 mi
• The Sing Family in Austin — 0.4 mi
• Tillotson College — 0.5 mi
• Parque Zaragoza — 0.6 mi