Grafik Intervention

Special thanks to Amy Searle

Printing the Poster with Krista, Emma, and Hannah

In production..

Krista scored the jackpot of information and images compiled by the Dunbar Historic Committee in 2003. We are working on sorting through the masses and creating our visuals.

Logistics! (Team JOMALI)

Cephas House!

Baptist Church!

County Jail!

Let the production begin! (Jamali)

Mood Board (Jamali)

Team Meeting

Church Template

This is what we are working with... the possibilities are endless!!

Team Salvation Conceptual Strategy

Our concept is to focus on the past history, present day usage, and the future potential of the Old Baptist Church. Our main design focus will be type driven, in conjunction with simple imagery to highlight certain important aspects of the church’s history and future implements. We are also thinking about using personal stories and song lyrics for the content of the typographic structure. We will use a progression of type to portray the different time periods. We will start with an older typeface and transition into a more modern face starting with the past and moving into the future. We also plan on having simple animation that will help to bring interest to the information we are projecting.

The sequence will start with the projection of the past on the main center facade of the church. This sequence will then move over to the left tower and become a stand still for the viewers to read. The present will then project onto the center and then move to the right tower and become a stand still. The sequence will end with the projection of the future in the center facade. This will leave the final image with the information of the past on the left tower, the future on the center facade, and the present on the right tower. The content of the past and present will be condensed and reformatted when moved.

Jail Birds Doin' Work

Here's a snapshot of the Jail Birds doin' some research! Olivia went to the San Marcos Public Library and spoke to a woman at the information desk that was more than thrilled to hear about our Grafik Intervention! As research comes to a close, we have begun to create the preliminary designs for the Calaboose in which we are including sound, motion graphics with typography and imagery.

Team Salvation

When freedom came in 1865, former slaves quickly established two important institutions: churches and schools. Reverend Moses Johns and a small group of believers organized the Colored Baptist Church Zion in 1866 and erected a sanctuary on property located on Guadalupe Street where Tuttle Lumber Company now stands.

Rev. Johns served the congregation until 1873 when Rev. L. Stephens was called to lead the church. According to oral history accounts, the local Ku Klux Klan burned the sanctuary on Guadalupe Street in ca1873 in an attempt to capture a black man who was thought to have been hiding in the church. Oral history accounts suggest that the nineteenth century pulpit still used in the present sanctuary was rescued from that fire.

In 1881, the congregation purchased the lot at 219 Comal Street where Old First Baptist still stands. The Hays County Deeds book indicates that trustees of the Colored Missionary Baptist Church, Oll Burleson, Dora Dusta, Lucky McQueen, and John Thomas, purchased a lot from Mrs. Julia Ann Travis for the sum of fifty cash and three promissory notes of fifty dollars each “payable respectively—October the 4th 1881, April 4th 1882 and October 4th 1882.”(Deed Book). By 1881, the church had changed its name from Colored Baptist Church Zion to Colored Missionary Church.

First Baptist was established by former slaves, and many of them were still alive in 1908 when the Comal Street (now MLK) edifice was built.
In addition to the vicissitudes of time, the massive Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rally in San Marcos on July 25, 1924, may have contributed to the decline in the city’s African-American population, Holt said. Gachot said the KKK rally attracted 35,000 people to San Marcos, double the town’s population.

Eddie Durham (1906-1987), famed and prolific composer, arranger, and player of jazz music, was born in San Marcos and, according to the Texas Historical Commission, developed the first amplified guitar.

About eight years ago, when Gachot taught architecture and drafting at Texas State, he and a student, in collaboration with Holt, created designs for the Old First Baptist Church that call for converting the building to a community center. According to the plans, the first floor of the building would accommodate dining, dancing, art classrooms, a kitchen, an office, and a day care facility. The second floor would include an entry porch, art gallery, and theater. The building’s third floor would include computer labs and classrooms for youth mentoring.



“A lot of kids are lost, they need guidance, and that was the purpose of that, and I think Elvin had a brilliant idea there,” Gachot said.

Gachot said renovating the old church will require a lot of money, and he said Hays County, the city, and caretakers of the Calaboose Museum and the Old First Baptist Church should work together to leverage funds for the effort.

This is future home of the Dora Lee Brady Community Center.

Team JOMALI!!

Ulysses Cephas - (1884-1952) The son of former slaves Joe and Elizabeth Cephas, Ulysses Cephas was born in San Marcos. He was trained at an early age to carry on the blacksmithing trade of his father. Known as "Boots" to his friends and family, Cephas eventually owned his own blacksmith shop and was known throughout the county for his skills in shoeing horses and creating superior wagons and farming implements. a respected community leader, he was an active member of the First Missionary Baptist Church and organizer of the San Marcos Independent Band. 

A little white house sits between a dilapidated church and a vacant lot on Martin Luther King Drive in the Dunbar Historic Neighborhood.

The now unoccupied building once belonged to Ulysses Cephas, an influential black leader in San Marcos. Cephas lived in San Marcos during the first half of the 20th Century, serving the community as a blacksmith, mentor and musician. Cephas died in 1952, and the house was sold to former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox. The house was commemorated with a Texas Historical Marker in 1989, and the City of San Marcos purchased the house in 2003 using Community Development Block Grant funds.

Located across the street from the Calaboose Museum, board member Josie Mack said the house at one point was going to be incorporated into the existing facilities. Mack worked with founder and former director of the Calaboose Johnnie Armstead, and said she was fond of the Cephas house.

“At one point the house was to be Johnnie’s office as part of the museum,” Mack said. “After she died things have changed, but I enjoyed working with her on the house and the museum.”

The house is located across the street from the Calaboose, but recent meetings held by the City of San Marcos have determined it will not be incorporated into the museum. At a public meeting held in September, community members discussed remodeling the house for use as a community arts and cultural center.

“We’re getting up to speed on the project and are asking the public for input,” said John Foreman, San Marcos Development Services planner. “There seems to be a lot of good ideas, and the Cephas house does need to somehow portray the history of the Cephas family and the community.”

Plans to stabilize the Cephas house’s foundation and remove asbestos are set to occur this year. The city hired Carter Design Associates to create plans for preservation of the house’s structure.

A banner hangs on the house’s facade, labeling the site as the “Future home of the Eddie Durham Museum.” Although jazz music pioneer Eddie Durham was a native of San Marcos, Durham never lived in the house.

“They thought about naming it (the house) for Durham, but I told them to name it for Cephas because he was also a great musician,” said Ollie Giles, local historian.

Giles said Cephas learned to play musical instruments by ear and taught others to play. Giles said she would like to see a display commemorating Cephas’s work as a musician and a blacksmith inside the home. Foreman said members of the Texas Music History program at Texas State have expressed interest in housing musical exhibits at the location.

The vacant lot adjacent to the Cephas house was purchased by the city in 2003. The city hired TBG Consulting Firm to design use of the lot as Eddie Durham Park. Plans for the lot include landscaping, walkways and musical entertainment pavilions. Foreman said he hopes the park can be used for the annual Durham Jazz Festival and by Texas State music programs.

Foreman said the city has met with neighborhood associations and the Historic Preservation Committee will meet next Tuesday with the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board to discuss the site.

Planning the Event

Brainstorming in progress!

Team Jail Birds

OLD HAYS COUNTY JAIL

One of Hays County’s most historic architectural gems from the 19th Century is the “old” Hays County Jail, shrouded for years behind thickening vegetation on Fredericksburg Street in San Marcos, not far from the courthouse square.

The historic site, listed in the National Register of Histroric Places since 1983, was vacated by the county in 1937 and eventually sold to San Marcos contractor Oscar Payne, who utilized it for many years for storage and as part of his construction yard. Payne’s heirs sold the property to Preservation Associates in the 1990s, the necessary seed money for the purchase coming from a local foundation.

Various plans for the building, if and when restored, have been offered and pursued for years, including the Junior League of San Marcos once envisioning a enlarged thrift store and the Combined Law Enforcement Assoctaion of Texas (CLEAT) offering support for a law enforcement museum at the site. Then Southwest Texas State University Professor Jim Kimmel from the university’s Department of Geography crafted a plan in 2000 that would have given direction to that effort.

Current discussions look to elements of Kimmel’s plan, as well as the extended possibility of an eventual master plan for the entire Dunbar Historic District, to include The Calaboose Museum, Eddie Durham Park, and other resources in the immediate area. Over recent years, caretaking by Preservation Associates took the form of stabilization and assessment. Structural engineers were called in to address the stability of the building (a corner had sunk into the ground) and to prepare it for “a basic mothballing of the building” that bought it time. Ownership has recently passed back to Hays County.

According to the narrative in its National Register dosumentation, Hays County Commissioners met on Valentine’s Day, 1884, to sign a contract for the construction of the new jail on the same lot as one built in 1873. Edward Northcraft and B.F. Donalson were given until August 12 to complete their task, an unimaginable schedule in today’s world, for which $11,500 was allocated. Specifications called for the jail to be constructed of the best stone, brick, and lumber.

The urgency with which county fathers addressed the jail situation was pushed along by a local newspaper editor’s critically-worded article. He offered testimony in the form of an artcle by a Kyle man who described “19 men confined in the 10 X 12 foot cell (in the jail then being utilized). Commissioners were apparently also influenced by reports of an attempted escape and the suicide of an Alabama lawyer who was a prisoner there.

The building served its intended function for almost a half century before being replaced by the county’s next jail.

The old Hays County Jail documented its most dramatic point in history when, on April 9, 1915, the only “official” hanging in Hays County was held in the jail yard there. The condemned man, Benjamin Guerrero, is reported to have puffed on a cigar at the end of his life and offered only the cryptic comment, “Fine show, no?” to the crowd gathered to witness his execution.

The Hays County relic is described architecturally as “typifying late 19th-Century jail construction in the Italianate style. It is a two-story limestone block structure with a simple brick dentiled cornice on the cell section.” Hoped for restoration plans go to the structure itself, as well as its adaptive re-use.

Still tweaking design

Still tweaking the design so bare with me. I've established a twitter feed. Made a link resource section. You guys should all have admin privileges. Add your links to the "resource" area for others to use. POST STUFF!!! -prof Newton

Research... Process... Documentation...

Typographic Design students: Begin posting in our new blog. Post all of your preliminary findings for the site.