Beginning in the 1930s, the Andrews school district, flush with oil revenues, started to build new schools as the town’s student population increased, especially in the post–World War II period. Of the several schools in Andrews this one best exemplifies the changes then taking place in the design of educational buildings. Caudill Rowlett Scott (CRS) conducted research at Texas A&M in College Station between 1949 and 1951 to test spatial organizations that maximized use of natural daylight and passive ventilation in the hot, sunny climates where they built. They also worked with educators to explore new spatial possibilities for learning and teaching. San Andres Elementary School exhibits the firm’s design approach: a single-story brick building, with open courtyards that could stimulate breeze flow, yet shield against high winds, and sloped roofs with extended eaves to shelter interior and exterior areas from the sun. Despite lean budgets, the firm showed that even tiny Andrews could become an incubator of innovation, attested to by the repeated publication of CRS’s Andrews schools in Architectural Record magazine in the 1950s. The firm created an economical architecture that was scaled to children and provided habitable spaces in a climate where extremes of hot and cold, and intense winds, are the norm.
Among the other notable schools are Andrews Middle School Annex (formerly Andrews Junior High School) of 1955 by Haynes and Kirby at 600 NW 3rd Street and Andrews High School (1961, Reid, Rockwell, Banwell and Tarics) at 1400 NW Avenue K.