Headlines / Quote of the Week austinchronicle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from austinchronicle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Be prepared to be gobsmacked.
The historic Rio Grande campus of Austin Community College once Austin High School and, before that, Allan Junior High School has been thoroughly transformed with an eye to the future of learning in this city.
More than a century of gritty wear and tear, as well as almost geologic layers left behind from past makeovers and expansions, have given way to open, modern classrooms, science labs and meeting spaces that swim with light and are designed for streamlined comfort.
As part of a $49 million project, two open-air courtyards, which once allowed daylight into the interiors but baked in hot weather, have been covered with high-tech tenting from Germany, making them comfortable year-round. The former auditorium has been turned into a tall-ceilinged training center and software factory for Army Futures Command. What not long ago was a cramped cafeteria is now an ACCelerator, a high-tech learning center laid out for mentoring, like the popular
One day in 1932, Alfred Dotson Sr., and his twin brother, Wilfred, became instant musical celebrities at Kealing Junior High School. The two native Austinites sang “Painting the Clouds with Sunshine” so charmingly that teachers sent the 13-year-old duo around the building on Pennsylvania Avenue in East Austin to perform for all of the classes.
“I sang it at my 75th wedding anniversary, too, with the men’s chorus at Ebenezer Baptist Church,” Dotson says in a smooth tenor voice. “I was with my wife, Ruth, for 79 years. She was my girl.”
If you request that song today, Dotson, who turns 102 on April 15, will likely oblige.
Texas first licensed Black architect John Chase left behind a modernist legacy heralddemocrat.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from heralddemocrat.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Any alert observer passing along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Chestnut Avenue in East Austin inevitably notices two revolutionary sites. One is the David Chapel Missionary Baptist Church with its dramatically escalating roofline, color-block windows and soaring modernist steeple. The other is the radically geometrical and cantilevered residence located a bit to the east of the landmark church at MLK and Maple Avenue known as the Phillips House.
Hidden two lots behind the Phillips House is another multi-level masterpiece, one that for decades was home to the late Irene Thompson, longtime school secretary for the segregated L.C. Anderson High School, who knew just about everybody in East Austin at one time or another.