Clarendon Motor Company Building

The Clarendon Motor Company Building, located in the town of Clarendon, Donley County (1990 pop. 2, 316) serves both as a reminder of the prosperity of the ranch economy around which the town prospered in the 1920s, and also as an example of the distinctive architectural forms adopted by the first car dealers in this country. Thus the significance of the building is twofold; it stands both as a symbol of the goals and aspirations of a then-growing community and also as a fine local example of Mission Revival architecture. Contextually, the building relates to the Texas Historical Commission's historic context Community and Regional Development in Texas, 1690-1945. The building is nominated to the National Register under Criterion A in the area of Commerce and C in the area of Architecture, both at the local level of significance.

The Clarendon Motor Company Building reflects an era in which the town of Clarendon began to prosper. Organized as the county seat in 1882, the town relocated five miles away to its present location in 1887, when the railroad arrived. Henry Lewis Calhart, a Methodist preacher and land speculator from New York founded Clarendon as his location for a Christian colony named for his wife, Clara. The town is 60 miles east of Amarillo. Calhart intended Clarendon to be a prohibition colony. All deeds of the property contained a clause forbidding the use of liquor. The first edition of the Clarendon News (August 2, 1879) proclaimed Clarendon's "sobriety settlement" with three words: Christianity, Education, and Temperance.

Henry Calhart's Clarendon Land Investment and Agency Company collapsed after the winter of 1886, but the community remained intact. Donley County was organized in 1882, and a courthouse, erected adjacent to the site of the Clarendon Motor Company Building, was built in 1890. The Southern Kansas and Panhandle Railroad (later called the Santa Fe Railroad) came from Topeka, Kansas, through Oklahoma, and into the Panhandle by 1887. The Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad, originating in Fort Worth, reached Clarendon shortly thereafter. Now feed, barbed wire and supplies could be freighted from Clarendon to the neighboring ranches rather than from Dodge City, 200 miles away. Clarendon grew to become a significant shipping point for the railroad. Cattle were shipped to Fort Worth and Kansas City from here.

By the 1920s, Clarendon had become the building block of the county economy. The population of Donley County jumped from 5,284 in 1910 to 8,035 in 1920, an increase of more than 50 percent. (Fourteenth Census of the US, 1922) Further, the population reached 10,262 in 1930, an increase of more than 23 percent from the previous decade. (Fifteenth Census of the US, 1932) Further, the population reached 10,262 in 1930, an increase of more than 23 percent from the previous decade. Significantly, the 1920 census recorded no urban population, while the 1930 census indicated an urban population of 2,756; this new number in the "urban" category reflects the now-measurable population of Clarendon itself. The commercial core of the small community grew around Kearney Street. In 1921, Clarendon boasted three banks, seven grocery stores, two school buildings, four drug stores, six churches, three restaurants, the Pasttime theater, three hotels, a hospital, one railroad, one newspaper, and even a college (there had once been an opera house, too, but it had been demolished by this time). The first school was established in Clarendon in 1878. Clarendon College was established in 1898.

In 1920, J.W. Martin and J.T. Patman purchased lots at the corner of Third and Sully Streets, across from the courthouse, where they commissioned Ed Barnes, a local builder, to erect the Clarendon Motor Company Building four years later, in 1924. Located at the corner of Third and Sully Streets (formerly known as Second and Jefferson Streets), the dealership was located along the town's major thoroughfare, Highway 5 to Fort Worth. Highway 5 supplanted an earlier highway known as the Colorado-to-Gulf (Denver to Galveston) and in part followed the route of the Ozark Trails (c. 1917, from Arkansas to New Mexico). Adjacent to the building was the courthouse (built in 1890), a funeral home, a hotel, the opera house (now demolished), an ice plant, and other buildings. In 1930, the men assumed a nearby Ford dealership and changed the building to a Chevrolet dealership. Mr. Martin died in 1936 and Mr. Patman in 1951 when the business was then sold to a gentleman named. Moffitt and Noblett. Three years later, Earl Alderson purchased the business and changed the name to Alderson Chevrolet, a name which it retained until the recent adaptive use.

By 1924, when the Clarendon Motor Company was established, the car industry had come to a great distance since the first car was run in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1893. Henry Ford's first car in Detroit led to the founding of the Ford Motor Company in 1903. The Model T was introduced in 1908. Ford began production with a moving assembly line in 1913. Between 1900 and 1910, the number of automobile sales increased from 4,100 units to 186,000 units nationally. The 1920s brought the advent of mass marketing of cars. Financing became available and tire design greatly improved. Henry Ford was considered something of a folk hero.

The automobile presence in Texas grew dramatically in the first two decades of this century. In 1903, there were fewer than fifty automobiles in Dallas. Scarcely ten years later, there were 32,000 cars in the state of Texas. By 1902, 428,000 cars were on Texas roads and there were 1,500 car dealers. There was one car for every ten people in the state at this time. 1.4 million cars traveled Texas roads in 1930. To keep up with the escalation in car ownership in the state, the Texas legislature passed the first registration of autos in 1907. In 1917, a highway department was created. Between 1909 and 1913, counties issued bonds for roads and bridges totaling $12.4 million. The Texas Almanac for 1914 reported that Texas counties also were spending $5 million annually to augment the bonds. 130,000 miles of public roads covered the state as early as 1912. The Federal Highway Act, passed in 1921, provided for national routes with expenses to be shared by both the federal government and the state. Another milestone occurred in 1925 when the Texas legislature conferred upon the highway department the authority to construct and maintain a connected system of highways. The plan required several years to take hold.

Census records indicate that by 1930, Donley County bore a surprisingly large number of businesses related to the automobile industry. There were 55 individuals employed by automobile agencies and repair shops in the county, 53 employed by automobile factories and repair shops, and 24 working by garages. (Neighboring counties, such as Gray and Collingsworth, reflected similar figures).
In Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture, Chester Liebs chronicles the development of the automobile industry and the accompanying new architectural forms that emerged. Unlike today's automobile dealerships that feature huge lots with a small building behind, early dealerships featured prominently located showrooms complete with clearly defined parts, including service areas. Liebs explains the newfound importance of the architecturally interesting automobile showroom in this era:
By the second decade of the new century, dealers began pouring their own money into lavish new facilities. Within ten years, fashionable showrooms were going up by the hundreds, and auto-showroom construction had become a visual game of visual one-upmanship. Now architectural imagery was used not just to give credibility to fledgling companies, but also to symbolize the power of well-established corporations and the prosperity of successful dealers.

The Clarendon Motor Company Building was part of this nationwide trend, serving as a deliberately distinctive architectural statement intended to lure prospective buyers into the showroom. Its Mission-shaped roof parapets and other design elements, borrowed from early Hispanic motifs, are here freely adapted to the needs of the modern commercial building. The Mission Revival mode of architecture is utilized in another local building, the Texas Saddlery Building (formerly Clarendon Junior High School, 1921), but the Motor Company Building possesses more refined details and is located in the heart of downtown, allowing it to serve as a critical architectural component of the urban fabric of the town. Architecturally, it always has been, and remains, one of the most important buildings in downtown Clarendon.

The composition of the building perfectly articulates the various functions within. For example, the showroom is, appropriately, a grander, two-story space that sets itself apart from the secondary parts and service areas. Further, the Mission Revival motif for the building manifests itself in several details, such as the canopies over the gasoline pumps. The builder adeptly continues the rhythm of the curving parapet where required, along the service wing of the principal facade, but suspends it along the less visible secondary parts department wing on Third Street.

The integrity of the building is excellent. The architect for the rehabilitation conducted extensive research regarding the original building before any work was undertaken. For example, historic exterior and interior paint colors were investigated and a template of the original wainscot detail work was made to guide the rehabilitation. Much of the original hardware was refinished; where it was missing, it was duplicated. Because the existing doors badly deteriorated, new ones were made to duplicate them. The metal ceiling and quarry tile floors were left intact. On the exterior, only badly deteriorated materials were removed and replaced with new materials to match. Near the west end of the south elevation, the overhead door was removed and replaced with an entrance based on the appearance of another opening on the east facade shown in a historic photograph.

Today, car dealers in Clarendon have followed the nationwide trend of establishing dealerships away from the central city along major highways, such as Highway 287 East. The building's role as a car dealership is over. It is fortunate that the current owners purchased the building with a clear vision for its adaptive use. They have systematically and carefully rehabilitated the building as part of a larger goal of revitalizing downtown, Clarendon. Like other small communities in the region, Clarendon has suffered in the decades since the erosion of ranching and farming as community economic generators. The building, rehabilitated into professional office space, may function as a catalyst in the future revitalization of the town center.