Camp Mabry Improvements – Austin TX

Description

Camp Mabry, named after Brigadier General Woodford H. Mabry, the Adjutant General of Texas from January 23, 1891 to May 4, 1898, is the headquarters of the Texas Military Forces. The original 90 acres was donated to the State of Texas in 1892. The first construction at the camp included a mess shed and a parade grandstand. By 1911, Camp Mabry had expanded to more than 385 acres. During World War I the United States Army used the camp as a training site and built several barracks and administration buildings.

Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects under the sponsorship of the Adjutant General’s Department of Texas formed the second major phase of construction at Camp Mabry from 1935 to 1943. The first WPA project approved for Camp Mabry consisted of necessary repairs and “other improvements to generally restore the useful value” of 15 buildings. Additionally, the WPA built structures of native limestone that included rustic walls, entrance gates and guard post, a dam, arched bridges, drainage ditches, a flagpole base, cannon bases, workshops, warehouses and storage buildings (dating from 1936 to 1942). Minor infrastructure features include limestone culverts, headwalls, and limestone or concrete sidewalks, some of which the WPA installed between 1936 and 1943. They constructed roads and cleared, leveled, sodded, and drained the camp.

In 1936, Texas was allotted $146,596.03 for the general repair and restoration of buildings, grounds, roads, and other permanent installations at Camp Mabry, a military installation. From 1936 to 1938, approximately 265 WPA workers constructed a variety of stone structures at Camp Mabry and made other improvements to the site.
WPA workers built a low limestone masonry wall along the camp’s southern boundary along West 35th street, with a guard post featuring wrought iron gates and lanterns at the camp’s main entrance. They constructed similar walls (here topped with wire fencing and similarly featuring wrought iron gates and lanterns) at two World War I era barracks, with a covered walkway between the two buildings. Around the camp, the workers replaced gravel roads with paved ones. Two pairs of limestone pyramidal pylons (originally flanking cattleguards) were installed on the road circling the parade ground, near what is now the Texas Military Forces Museum on the west side and the Arsenal on the east side. These pyramids are aligned with each other and were connected by a long cedar wooden fence (no longer extant) at the south end of the parade ground. WPA workers constructed caretaker apartments within five other World War I era buildings and built stables at the rear of another. Along the creek which runs through the western part of Camp Mabry, workers replaced the original 1892 brick dam with a limestone dam and built three arched stone bridges. A portion of the stone used at Camp Mabry was obtained by dismantling existing Civilian Conservation Corps buildings in Wise and Montague Counties (also in Texas).
In 1941, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson served as a liaison between the Texas Adjutant General J. Watt Page and President Roosevelt in securing WPA funds for improvements to the Texas National Guard facilities at Camp Mabry. On January 30, 1941, General Page was notified that $268,769 in federal money had been designated for WPA project #50436 and that the “project is now eligible for operation at the discretion of the State Work Projects Administrator.”
This project included the construction of ten motor storage buildings, a paint shop, and a general shop, and the installation of storm sewers, roads, paths, utilities, grading, and other related sitework. Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick designed the buildings; the Ransdell Construction Company and WPA workers built them. Seven of the motor storage buildings (now known as Buildings 33 through 39) were built in 1941, and three of these (Buildings 30, 31, and 32), as well as the paint shop and general shop (Buildings 21 and 26) were built in 1942. The Federal government (War Department) took control of Buildings 30-36 shortly after their completion. The roughly identical motor storage buildings are arranged in one long row to the north of the parade ground. They feature limestone random ashlar masonry walls on their east and west elevations; those built in 1941 also feature this masonry on their northern elevations, while those built in 1942 feature CMU masonry on their northern elevations. The southern elevations originally featured full height sliding corrugated metal doors, most of which are now permanently closed.