REMEMBER WHEN: Fast times at Old Granite School

Keeping the Old Granite School at 2001 Broadway in Marble Falls stable and functioning, whether for classrooms, administrative offices, or as The Falls on the Colorado Museum, has been a labor of love—and imagination—in this Highland Lakes community for 133 years. 

It began as Marble Falls Alliance University in 1891, charging $2 a month for elementary students, $2.50 for intermediate, and $3 for high school. Students could also study business or music for $4 or $3.50 a month, respectively. The school was built of pink granite quarried from nearby Granite Mountain, the same rock used for the Texas Capitol.

It was the only building in the Marble Falls Independent School District when the district purchased the property in 1908, serving first through 11th grade, then considered the senior year.

In the structure’s 13 decades, it has been renovated, stabilized, and reimagined multiple times, including its current incarnation as The Falls on the Colorado Museum.

Love for the building has grown as it ages, although talk began to stir in the 1970s that it might be time to tear it down. Then-Superintendent Charles Hundley, with a sincere passion for and multiple degrees in history, stepped in to preserve what he viewed as a vital community touchstone. 

Hundley ran the Marble Falls district from 1973-81. He convinced the school board to save the building, but while there was heart, there was no money. 

Hundley organized a fundraiser to sell showers in the high school fieldhouse to motorcyclists blasting through town on a Labor Day ride.

“Some schools have bake sales,” Hundley said with a smile. “We worked all weekend. I was sitting there in front of the fieldhouse in my lawn chair at a little table, and for $1, they could take a shower. Six hundred showers later, we had a start on the money.”

Volunteers also sold tiny bars of soap donated by a local hotel for 25 cents each.

“That’s a priceless memory,” said Hundley, who has since retired in Marble Falls after a 38-year career in superintendency that included stints in San Marcos and Abilene. 

The fundraiser proceeds were a drop in the bucket of what was needed.  The district eventually spent $100,000 renovating the building. Work was completed in 1982, two years after the Texas Historical Commission granted the structure a historical marker and one year after Hundley moved on to San Marcos ISD. 

The memories of longtime locals go even further back than Hundley’s to when the building was the only public school in town.

The fire escape on the back side of the Old Granite School is an especially fond memory for four classmates who attended in the early 1950s. Gail Wood, Nona Barnett Fox, Sam Burnam, and Russ Roper all recently gathered at The Falls on the Colorado Museum to talk about those days. They were joined by museum board member Darlene Oostermeyer, who was not a student but spent plenty of summers climbing up the fire escape from the outside.

As an eighth-grader at the school, Fox remembers a student who figured out that everyone would have to evacuate if he surreptitiously threw the fire alarm. Those on the second floor got to exit by slide.

“They figured out who was doing it, and that got stopped,” Fox said. “But even after that stopped, they had to test it twice a year, so we still got to slide. We loved going down that slide.” 

Some enterprising students on the playground crawled up to the top to slide down during recess. That, too, was frowned upon by authorities.

“During recess and lunch, a teacher was usually standing at the end of the fire escape so we couldn’t crawl up it,” Fox said. 

During the summer, with nary a teacher in sight, Oostemeyer made two or three runs down the slide, sitting on wax paper she pilfered from her grandmother’s kitchen to prepare it for hours of entertainment.

“After once or twice with wax paper, you just went zipping down it,” she said.

Wood, who came to school via bus from Spicewood, said he climbed up the fire escape for a quick slide any chance he got, no matter the consequences.

“That always got us into a lot of trouble,” Wood said. “I lost count of how many paddlings I got. Most of those were for chewing gum, though.” 

Burnam claims he was never paddled, though he once came close. Trouble on the fire escape saved his backside. 

“I was sent to the office at the same time (another student) was sent for pestering a girl upstairs,” Burnam said. “Instead, he went down the fire escape so he wouldn’t get paddled. I’m not sure he ever came back.”

Burnam was facing punishment for pulling a girl’s hair. He still has a scar on his wrist from where she stabbed him with her pencil in retaliation.

“After (that student) went down the fire escape, the principal forgot all about me,” Burnam said with a smile.

Another favorite memory shared between these classmates happened during a flood when students and teachers had to spend the night at the school. 

“Fort Hood sent helicopters to drop food to us,” Burnam said. “We were so excited.”

He recalled one father who swam across the creek three times to bring each of his three children home. 

The grade levels taught at the Marble Falls school changed as the district built new campuses. Following the 1980 renovation, the administration offices and kindergarten took over. 

The late state Sen. Walter Richter, who graduated in 1934 from the school his father also attended, was on hand for the grand re-opening of the building in 1982. His daughter, Robyn Richter, who now lives on the family ranch south of Marble Falls, was teaching in the district at the time of his speech, although not in that building. She is now on the board of The Falls on the Colorado Museum. 

“I’m a newcomer compared to other people volunteering here,” Robyn Richter said of the docents and board members who keep the history museum thriving. “Being here has let me focus on this love of place that I have. It’s a place I can focus my love of this area.” 

In his speech 40 years ago, Sen. Richter called the Old Granite School “the queenship of the Marble Falls academic fleet.” He noted the difference in two essential functions the newly renovated building was about to take on.

“One is the administrative arm of the entire school system,” he said. “The second, on the other end of the spectrum in a sense, is the kindergarten—that program dedicated to the beginning of our children’s formal educational experience. The Alpha and the Omega, so to speak!”

He emphasized the importance of ”looking to where we’ve been” when promoting the future. 

“Fifty-nine years agoin 1923, when I entered the first grade, a tow-headed tyke who spoke German and virtually no English, all grades were housed in this building,” he said in his speech. “There was no gymnasium, no auditorium, no cafeteria, no vocational ag shop or courses, and no turf on the football field, only granite gravel and sandburs.Matter of fact, abrasions on legs and elbows of the gridders were badges of honor and symbols of macho, although we weren’t familiar with the term in those days.”

The last classroom moved out in 1987; the MFISD administration stayed until 2009, when the superintendent’s office took over the former Colt Elementary School, and Colt students moved to a new building near the high school on Manzano Mile.

The Falls on the Colorado Museum leased the building from the district in 2010, adding improvements to the grounds, the structures, and the contents over the past 24 years. The second floor, however, was deemed unsafe for public use. 

This year, the school board dedicated $250,000 to shore up the upper floor, which The Falls on the Colorado Museum Board of Directors agreed to match and then some. They are raising money through donations to repair the stairs and replace the windows on both floors, returning the second-floor windows to their original design. 

The original oak boards of the upstairs flooring have been uncovered and restored. The pressed-tin ceiling, walls, and some of the blackboards have also been restored. 

Another former student from the 1950s, Mary Wimberly, recently visited the museum with her niece (this reporter) to check out the current renovations. Her mother (this reporter’s grandmother), Icia Mae Wheeler Clark, attended the school as a first- and second-grader in 1922 and 1923. 

Like her classmates, Wimberly also relished any chance to slide down the fire escape as a kid. 

“It was either really hot or really cold, and it got your pants all dirty and rusty,” she said. “If you had on a dress, you just scooped it under you.” 

Wimberly grew up on Broadway, just a few blocks east of the school.  She said preserving the old building, especially as a receptacle for the artifacts and memories of days gone by, is worthwhile and shows how much Marble Falls residents cherish their history.

“I think it’s very important to preserve our past,” she said, “and especially that old school. So many of us went to school there. So many of us, and a lot of us are still here.” 

Yes, we are here, for now, remembering and preserving. 

suzanne@thepicayune.com

How to support historic museum

The Falls on the Colorado Museum, 2001 Broadway in Marble Falls, is undergoing a renovation that will open up the second floor of the one-time Old Granite School for the first time in 15 years. 

While the Marble Falls Independent School District, which owns the property, recently allocated $250,000 to ensure the second floor is safe for public exhibits, the museum’s Board of Directors has embarked on a fundraising campaign for the $500,000 needed to do the rest. They have already raised $250,000 for Phase 1 to replace the many windows on both floors and repair the interior stairs.

The next $250,000 will fund Phase 2, which involves outfitting the second floor with exhibits and installing outdoor education areas. 

Here’s how you can help: 

• Buy a window—Upstairs windows, which are all now spoken for, cost $5,000 each. Downstairs windows are $3,700 each, and several are left to claim. Donors’ names will be engraved on a plaque displayed in the museum in tribute.
• Donate any amount—Those who give $500 or more will be memorialized on a donor recognition display. You can donate online.