Main Street Project — 1980

In September 1980, Navasota was one of five Texas cities to become a special improvement project called the National Main Street Program sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Six states were selected by the National Trust with five cities chosen in each state. Joining Navasota in Texas were Eagle Pass, Hillsboro, Plainview and Sequin.

At first, the City of Navasota provided a part-time director, Mark Malnory, who beginning the following June 1981, was replaced by a full-time employee named Julie Cad-dell. Slow to catch on, the local banks of then First National Bank, Security State Bank and First Federal Savings and Loan, formed a $60,000 loan pool to provide low-interest loans to building owners for façade improvements. The loans were available at 8 percent interest with a maximum of $10,000 per building. That interest rate seems high, but in the early 1980s interest rates were well into the teens.

L. B. Lindley, then owner of the building on the northeast corner of LaSalle and Washington Streets, was the first to take advantage of the loan pool. The building, otherwise vacant, had been used to store old clothing and equipment. Malnory, the first project director, helped secure a 5-year office lease with the Texas Department of Human Resources for the building.

Lindley, himself spent a large amount of money to construct plush offices in the then 57-year old structure. A 15-foot ceiling was retained in the lobby while the exterior brick veneer and Carrara glass was removed to expose the original façade found in great condition. A new paint job was applied, and an awning finished by November 1981.

Across LaSalle on the Northwest corner of LaSalle and Washington Avenue, Rivers Patout, owner of the building occupied by the R & N Drugstore, likewise took advantage of the low-interest loan to improve that structure. The boarded-up windows were reopened and the building painted.

This made two very visible ‘signs’ along Washington Avenue’s Main Street and instilled incentive for other planned improvements based on the low interest loans available. The old First National Bank, now Prosperity Bank, then owned by Tim and Helen Urquhart, took on a face-lift with cleaning and interior work done in-house. William Albert Miller’s building, known as the Mobley building on Washington Avenue, was also scheduled for an extensive façade improvement. Railroad Street was scheduled for facelifts on the two metal Charles No-to structures as well as Bob Whitten’s four buildings.

Today, revitalization continues. Railroad Street has major improvements underway with one of the two Noto buildings facing the railroad now a newly refurbished barber shop with a spiraling red and white sign. The other Noto building facing the railroad is scheduled to be a microbrewery. The Washington Avenue Noto store building at the Railroad Street corner is under renovation to become a multiuse building as a street level restaurant, and the upper two levels office space and an event center.

Also, on Railroad Street, two artists occupy the revitalized old historic Giesel hotel building, and the historic P. A. Smith three story structure will soon be opening as a posh hotel.

The 1980s were also when the National Trust declared the extensive commercial district as historic with a survey that ran just shy of 150 pages of photos, building descriptions, and designating Washington Avenue as an historic early Texas pathway of travel.

(Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. Visit www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more information or to become a member)