- City:
- Irving, TX
- Site Type:
- Community Centers, Civic Facilities
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Started:
- 1936
- Designer:
- J.F. Woerner
- Quality of Information:
- Moderate
- Marked:
- Yes
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
Esther Hurwitz and the Irving Felicity Club led efforts to obtain this U.S. Works Progress Administration project for Irving. The Felicity Club, Dallas Co., the WPA, and various individuals funded the project at a cost of $1,852.52. The Dallas Co. Irving Fresh Water Supply Dist. #5 donated land for the building.
Work began on the Irving Community Clubhouse in January 1936. On March 17, 1936, the Felicity Club presented the one-story brick building to the city.
J.F. Woerner served as architect and Robert Gidley as landscape architect. Local men constructed the 50′ x 25′ structure, which had a small kitchen and a large meeting room with French windows, a cathedral ceiling with fans, and a fireplace. Another room was added in 1946.
Home to the Boy and Girl Scouts, Rotary and Lions Clubs, the Irving Home Demonstration Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and other groups, the building saw teens through rites of passage such as first dances and driver’s license tests. During World War II, women made army kits here, and the Red Cross once began a fundraising march here.
The city closed the deteriorating building in 1995. In 2002, the city council funded its restoration.
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Today, the building is home to the Irving Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Incidentally, the construction dates on the WPA plaque that hangs in front of the building conflict with the dates listed on the historical marker.
Source notes
Historical marker in front of building.
Site originally submitted by Douglass Halvorsen on February 15, 2018.
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