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Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast » South Texas » Kingsville to Alice » Kingsville and Vicinity (Kleberg County) » Henrietta M. King High School

Henrietta M. King High School

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1909, Jules Leffland. Kleberg Ave. at 3rd St.
  • (Photograph by Gerald Moorhead)

Built with funds donated by the institution's namesake, the school is prominently located on a 5.5-acre suburban site encircled by an expansive lawn. Its construction suggests rapid growth in the city's student population, from 13 in 1906 to 600 in 1913, at which time the two-story building, with a twenty-two-room symmetrical floor plan, was filled to capacity. Noted for its distinctive fifteen-bay front elevation with central pavilion flanked by two towers, the school is similar in design to Leffland's Nordic-influenced Nazareth Academy in Victoria ( VI8). Like the academy, the school, with its scrolled central pavilion, is more attuned to the Danish immigrant roots of Leffland than to the Alamo, its purported inspiration. After a fire in 1925, the exterior of the school was preserved, and the structure rebuilt with a rear wing matching the scale and materials of the original building. Little has been altered since that time, and fund-raising is in progress for rehabilitation as a city hall and education center.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Henrietta Heights
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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Henrietta M. King High School", [Kingsville, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-01-KA6.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 255-256.

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