Architecture of Henry Trost and UTEP

If you're interested in architecture, you won't want to miss the program at UTEP on Saturday, January 18th, at 1pm.

Join Dr. Max Grossman for a richly illustrated 45-minute presentation followed by a half-hour tour of the four oldest buildings on the UTEP campus. This event will focus on the role of the iconic architect Henry C. Trost, the foundation and early development of Texas School of Mines and Metallurgy, and the introduction of the Bhutnese style to campus.

For more information on this event, see the full listing on our Texas Mountain Trail calendar, here.

Join Dr. Max Grossman for a richly illustrated 45-minute presentation followed by a half-hour tour of the four oldest buildings on the UTEP campus. This event will focus on the role of the iconic architect Henry C. Trost, the foundation and early development of Texas School of Mines and Metallurgy, and the introduction of the Bhutnese style to campus.

- See more at: http://texasmountaintrail.com/events/el-paso-texas-trost-society-tom-lea-institute-invitation#sthash.P8vG9V1p.dpuf

Glory Road Teaching Materials Contest!

We just learned of a neat contest to develop teaching materials about the historic Texas Western (now UTEP) basketball team from 1965-6.

From the website:

"One of UTEP’s most important moments came on March 19, 1966, when the men’s basketball team beat Kentucky for the NCAA National Championship. Coach Don Haskins and the entire team were later admitted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997 and 2007, respectively. In 2011 the team was featured on a Wheaties box and the next year, during the 75th anniversary of the NCAA tournament, ESPN ranked the victory the #3 moment in the entire tournament history.

But the victory’s significance extends beyond basketball. The fact that the Miner team started five black players against Kentucky’s all-white team thrust the game into the nation’s civil rights movement. In 1955, the school had been the first in Texas to desegregate but the national struggle for rights was far from over. The victory challenged the color line in college athletics and the rest of national activities. The Miners’ story was immortalized in the 2006 motion picture Glory Road.


The Center for History Teaching & Learning invites recommendations for teaching this story and its significance in El Paso schools during 2014. We seek innovative and exciting strategies that will take this story to a new generation.

1. Review the resources on this page to familiarize yourself with the history. Feel free to draw on any other resources of which you are aware.
2. Design a learning activity for social studies (especially grades 4, 7, and 11) or any other subject. We don't seek entire lesson plans, but rather exciting ideas that teachers may use to create their own plans to meet their own students’ needs. See these samples.
3. Submit your activities via email to chtl@utep.edu by December 22, 2013.
The best ideas will be published by the Center and the creators will receive a UTEP Centennial Prize Pack."

Click HERE to go to a terrific website about the 1966 NCAA Basketball Champions! (Loads of photographs!)

12 Days of Christmas: UTEP's Centennial Museum

On the campus of University of Texas El Paso, there's a great museum with exhibits on the natural and cultural history of the Chihuahuan Desert region.  The Centennial Museum is a great place to visit, and while you're there, duck into their lovely store...lots of good shopping inside! 

12 Days of Christmas: Historic Kern Place Neighborhood

Kern Place Gate, 1916

Photo courtesy of the El Paso Public Library.

 

 

El Paso has to be among the most surprisingly charming cities in the state...get off the interstate and explore and you'll see it for yourself.  There are neighborhoods bursting with personality and history, and are worth your time.  Take, for instance, the Kern Place neighborhood, bordering UTEP, the University of Texas El Paso.

Plans for this neighborhood began in 1914, and Peter Kern's plan for a gracious neighborhood was in full swing with 40 homes by 1917.  Kern had this gate built at the corner of Kansas and Robinson, to help boost sales.

Today, lovely and interesting homes still grace the neighborhood, and it is filled with interesting shops for you to explore too.  A good place for holiday shopping, it is also terrific for dining, too!  The neighborhood is home to what Texas Monthly has deemed the #4 burger in the state, at Toro Burger...one of our favorites.  And just this month, Texas Monthly named Crave, one of the top breakfast places in the state!  Nearby is Crazy Cat Cyclery, a great bike shop and community center for cyclists.


Take a look at this slideshow with history about the area, by Laura Cruz-Acosta.
Read more about this wonderful area of the largest city in the Texas Mountain Trail region, here.

Behind these doors, the sunlight of our past

Volunteers have transformed the three rooms of 500 S. Oregon Street into a sunny, welcoming place to learn history

Outside banners and historic markers identify the building as a special place in the neighborhood

An altar honoring healers including Teresita Urrea

Banner honoring Teresita Urrea

Walk into the three small rooms of Museo Urbano, and you walk into a community and a history suddenly illuminated by sunshine and the hard work of volunteers.

This working class neighborhood in South El Paso is truly a bridge between Mexico and the United States, yet in earliest memory it was Apache country.  Museo's exhibits tell a rich rapidly unfolding history of this building at 500 S. Oregon Street:

1827      The site is purchased by Juan Maria Ponce de Leone, part of the area known as El Bosque along the Rio Grande
1880      Ben Dowel, first mayor of El Paso owns the land. His wife, Juana Marquez Dowel is a Tigua Indian.  Their photos are on display.
1881      An adobe U.S. Customs House is built on the property
1893      It becomes a Ladies Hospital, championed by humanitarian and philanthropist Olga Kohlberg
1895      The building becomes the Aoy Public School, also called the Mexican Preparatory School, and teaches 500 barrio children
1896-7   Santa Teresita Urrea, a healer who had inspired revolutions in Mexico and banished by President Diaz moves to the building.  Two hundred people a day come to the home to be healed; here, three assassination attempts are made on Urrea's life.
1900      The building becomes a Chinese laundry
1907      Pierre Cazanabe aka Felix Robert, a French bullfighter buys the building.  While here, he organizes bullfights and fights between bulls and buffalos at Juarez's bullring.  Now brick, the building bears his name.
1911      The building becomes home to a bicycle repair shop
1916      The building becomes a saloon
1919-20 Henry Flipper, the first African-American graduate of West Point, and Buffalo Soldier, lives in the building while working as a land surveyor for Albert Fall, then a U.S. Senator and later Secretary of the Interior and key player in the Teapot Dome scandal.

The building continues to be a residence, making it a living, breathing historic site.  Museo Urbano is clearly a labor of love for countless volunteers--including UTEP students and History Department Chair Dr. Yolanda Leyva, and author of Ringside Seat to a Revolution, David Romo.  They've added photographs of early history from the time it was a laundry, a school, a hospital.  There is a video display of more historic images.  An altar honors healers and an exhibit displays plants used for healing.

Inside there's a community scrapbook, a place individuals have added their own images and memories of this neighborhood.  Community members have also brought in altar items, healing plant materials and other artifacts for display.

Come see it yourself before June 15.  Museo Urbano is open Saturdays and Sundays, 10-2, and by appointment.  Walking tours of the neighborhood are also available by appointment.  For more information, call Dr. Yolanda Leyva, 915-747-5508. 

With additional funding...and they are seeking funds...they can keep the building open to the public past June 15.

Museo Urbano is supported in a variety of ways by many departments at University of Texas-El Paso, by the El Paso Public Library, El Paso County Historical Society, and our own Heritage Tourism Partnership Grant through the Texas Mountain Trail and the Texas Historical Commission.  However, the site slated for demolition in a standing city renewal plan. There is a desire to make the area a historic district, hopefully saving important sites like 500 S. Oregon for future generations. Here's a video from Luis Alberto Urrea, about the site.

For more information on Museo Urbano, follow their Facebook page here.

UTEP's Centennial Museum

A hidden gem of the region is University of Texas-El Paso's Centennial Museum, with impressive changing exhibitions on history, natural history and culture of the region, as well as permanent displays.  A lovely garden on the grounds presents native species of the Chihuahuan Desert.  We encourage you to visit this great museum! 

The Museum's website says this,

"The Museum’s permanent exhibits focus on the natural and cultural history of the Chihuahuan Desert region. The extensive stored collections of the Centennial are available for scholarly research. In the temporary galleries the Museum presents a wide range of exhibits on themes related to border life and culture, the Americas, and UTEP activities. "

We send our thanks to Randy Mallory and the Texas Historical Commission for use of this photo! 

From Above, Day 3

This is the third "taste" of a wonderful aerial photography exhibit now on display at UTEP's Centennial Museum....photographs by Adriel Heisey.  They were taken from the open seat of his tiny, experimental Kolb TwinStar airplane.  Check out Friday's and Saturday's entries on this blog for more information.

From Above, Day 2

One of the stunning aerial photographs by Adriel Heisey on view at UTEP's Centennial Museum.  See yesterday's entry for more information on this exhibition. 

Flowers Gracing the Chihuahuan Desert Garden at UTEP's Centennial Museum

Flowers in the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens outside UTEP's Centennial Museum in El Paso!

UTEP's Centennial Museum

The Centennial Museum on the campus of University of Texas-El Paso offers visitors wonderful exhibits on culture, history and natural history.  Surrounding the Bhutanese-inspired building is a demonstration Chihuahuan Desert Garden.  Check it out when visiting central El Paso!

'The Disappeared' exhibition at UTEP

The Disappeared is an exhibition so ambitious in scope that it encompasses three exhibition spaces of The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP): Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, Centennial Museum, and Union Exhibition Gallery. We visited the exhibition at the Centennial Museum and were moved by the works on display.

From the exhibition publication:

"The word 'disappeared' was refined during the military dictatorships that ruled many Latin American countries during the mid-to-late twentieth century, when it came to describe members of the resistance, their sympathizers and everyday citizens who were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the regime. The exhibition contains work by thirteen contemporary artists and one artists' collective in a variety of media from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Venezuela, who over the course of the last thirty years have made art about the disappeared. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The younger artists were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. Others have lived in countries maimed by endless civil war."

Plan to visit the Centennial Museum and the other exhibition locations on the UTEP campus now through September 11.