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Amarillo College (Amarillo Junior College)

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1929 established. 2201 S. Washington St.

Founded as Amarillo Junior College, the institution acquired a six-block site in the Mrs. M. D. Oliver-Eakle Addition in the 1930s. The college’s first permanent building (now named Ordway Auditorium) was designed in 1937 by Guy A. Carlander, whose reputation for modernist abstraction led to his selection as architect for the campus. Construction was underwritten by the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the National Youth Administration (NYA). Ordway Auditorium is a rambling structure of buff brick, with cast-stone trim, zigzag window mullions, fluted cast-stone lintels, and chevron capitals. Carlander employed similar stylistic devices two years later on the nearby former Russell Gymnasium. The college’s expansion from the 1960s has resulted in the demolition of entire blocks of houses for surface parking lots.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Amarillo Museum of Art (Amarillo Arts Center)
Henry Holland House
Wolflin Historic District
Clarence M. Eakle House
Josephine Wardlaw and O. P. Jones House

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Amarillo College (Amarillo Junior College)", [Amarillo, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-AO25.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 344-344.

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