Taylor School At 1500 Louisiana St.

[SpaceGhost]

There are lots of references to the building from 1938, specifically naming Kenneth Franzheim, who at the same time was commissioned to design Lamar HS. You can draw some similarities between the designs of the two buildings. According to this article the building was planned to be next to the existing Taylor School, facing Smith Street, so about where the parking garage across from the old library is.

[gnu]

On 5/7/2023 at 11:42 AM, SpaceGhost said:

There are lots of references to the building from 1938, specifically naming Kenneth Franzheim, who at the same time was commissioned to design Lamar HS. You can draw some similarities between the designs of the two buildings. According to this article the building was planned to be next to the existing Taylor School, facing Smith Street, so about where the parking garage across from the old library is.

The Taylor School was at 1500 Louisiana (later to become Enron South).  It appears it was a vocational school. Thus the likely address for the above proposed administration building would have been 1500 Smith (the hypothetical block bounded by Smith, Bell, Leland, & Brazos).

Smith ended up being the only street mentioned in the article that was pushed through (and Allen Center was eventually built where the Bagby and Brazos right of ways would have been).

According to city directories, the administration was split between a building at 1600 Washington (business office) and the building at 1500 Louisiana  (sharing the building with the vocational school) until 1955. Then it consolidated operations and moved into the old Sam Houston High School at 1300 Capitol (currently the site of HSPVA) until the Taj Majal was built on Richmond.

[Highrise Tower]

Found a picture of the Taylor School located at 1500 Louisiana.  Imagine this school building in the heart of downtown? Such cool history here!

Edward Wyllis Taylor
1814-1886

In 1850, he moved to Houston. He was engaged in the mercantile business for a while, and later, organized a large lumber company.

He was superintendent of Chris Episcopal Church Sunday School for many years.  Mr. Taylor was the first president of the Houston School Board, superintendent at the time of his death.