National Register Listing

Pampa City Hall

200 W. Foster, Pampa, TX

Pampa City Hall (1930), in the eastern Texas panhandle, remains a symbol of the city's growth and prosperity in the oil boom days of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Designed in a Beaux Arts Style with Georgian ornament by Amarillo architect William Raymond Kaufman, the building reflects the great strides the city made in growth and wealth and stands as a major element in the city's "Million Dollar Row," a series of civic and commercial buildings anchoring the central business district. The property is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A in the area of Community Planning and Development, and under Criterion C, in the area of Architecture, both at the local level of significance.

Pampa lies in the northwest corner of Gray County, which was created in 1876, and named for Peter W. Gray, a soldier, attorney, member of the first Texas Legislature and the House of the Confederate Congress, and Texas Supreme Court Justice. The county is located in the southern portion of the Great Plains, partly situated on the caprock, a hardpan layer a few feet below the ground surface. The county lies within the Llano Estacado or "staked plains," a Spanish name that might have referred to stakes that were placed as markers because the lands were so vast and level.

Native Americans may have lived in the area 20,000 years ago. The county's prehistoric Plains Apaches gave way to the Apaches, who were in turn displaced by the Comanches and Kiowas. Spanish exploration of the area began after Francisco Vasquez de Coronado advanced into the Panhandle in 1541 in search of gold. Army engineers began mapping the area beginning with J. W. Abert near Hoover and Lefors in 1845, followed by an expedition led by Randolph B. Marcy with George B. McClellan in 1852. These expeditions were followed by the arrival of buffalo hunters and traders. Native Americans were removed to Indian Territory after the Red River War of 1874. The federal government established Fort Elliott in 1875 in adjacent Wheeler County after the first cantonment settled in eastern Gray County earlier that year.

Ranchers settled the area as early as 1877 and were soon followed by land syndicates which established vast ranches. In 1882, the Francklyn Land and Cattle Co. purchased approximately 637,440 acres in Gray, Carson, Hutchinson and Roberts Counties. In 1886, English bondholders foreclosed on the land, which became part of the newly organized White Deer Lands Co., which operated the Diamond F Ranch. In 1888, the Southern Kansas Railroad extended its line through the Panhandle toward Amarillo, through present-day Pampa. Thomas Lane, a telegraph operator, manned a section station at the rail switch and became the first postmaster when White Deer Lands manager George Tyng applied for a post office in 1892. The name of the station changed from Glasgow to Sutton, and finally to Pampa, so named because Tyng saw a similarity to the flat terrain of the Argentine pampas (plains) he had once visited. In 1902, White Deer Lands began to sell its holdings to newly arriving farmers on long-term credit, leading to a land rush in Gray County. In 1916, White Deer Lands built its third and last office building in Pampa, from which land sales were conducted until 1957.

Gray County was organized in 1902, and the first courthouse was constructed in Lefors, which was located in the center of the county. That same year, Pampa was laid out north of the railroad, encompassing 38 blocks, bordered on the north by Browning, east by Wynne, south by Atchison, and west by West, and consisting almost entirely of simple frame buildings. As a farming and ranching center, the population of Pampa remained under 1,000 until the discovery of oil in 1926 transformed Pampa into a boom town. Godfrey Cabot, head of Cabot Carbon in Boston, established a carbon black plant in 1927. The city improved downtown streets with brick, churches expanded, and many downtown business owners tore down their frame buildings and erected permanent buildings, including the multiple-storied Hughes Building, the Schneider Hotel, Worley Hospital, city parks, and the Pampa Youth and Community Center and Country Club. In 1928, Pampa used its wealth and influence to wrest the county seat from Lefors in an election. By the late 1920s, Pampa's growth had outstripped the city's service and facilities. A 1929 bond election resulted in $238,000 worth of improvements, mainly to construct a new city hall, fire station, streets and parks. Of this amount, $100,000 was dedicated to the construction of the new city hall.

Amarillo architect William Raymond Kaufman designed the Pampa City Hall, along with the Gray County Courthouse (1929, NR 1998), and Pampa Fire Station (1930), all erected in a row just north of the grand Schneider Hotel on Albert Square. Kaufman also designed the Art Deco-style Combs-Worley Building (1931), located directly to the east of the courthouse. The area soon became known as "Million Dollar Row." The development of this area, with three compatible civic buildings by the same architect, reveals a sophisticated level of planning. The civic buildings, despite having different functions, share similar glazed terra cotta ornamentation and are finished with buff brick. Like the adjacent courthouse, Pampa City Hall features a tempered Beaux-Arts style and relatively flat ornamentation (paired columns, for example, common to Beaux-Arts buildings, are here reduced to paired brick pilasters), combined with an abundance of large regular windows and a light skeletal appearance, similar to many commercial and industrial buildings of the early 20th century. The city awarded the construction contract to John T. Glover, of Pampa. The total cost of the project came to approximately $120,000. The building was completed in December 1930, with a dedication ceremony held on February 12, 1931, during which one guest speaker enthused, "This city hall is a credit to a municipality much larger." Others praised the White Deer Land Company for setting aside the tract of land housing the public buildings.

Kaufman (1881-1948) was the son of Amarillo architect Davis Paul Kaufman (1852-1915). Working together in the firm of D.P. Kaufman & Son, they designed many buildings in the Texas Panhandle and nearby New Mexico, including the Elks Club, Old Grand Theater, St. Mary's Academy (1913-14), and Lowrey's Academy, all in Amarillo, the Union County Courthouse (1909) in Clayton, NM, and the Cochran County Courthouse (1926, remodeled 1968) in Morton, TX. Kaufman also designed Elizabeth Nixon Jr. High School, in Amarillo, and the Sam Houston Elementary School (1930) in Pampa. In 1939, Kaufman moved to San Antonio to work in the Army Engineer's office at Fort Sam Houston. After his death in San Antonio in 1948, Kaufman's son, W.R. Kaufman, Jr., an architect trained at Texas Tech, took over the family firm.

Pampa City Hall originally contained the police department and the city jail in the north half of the basement. At one time a branch of the Amarillo-based KGRS radio station was also located in the basement, and the city library expanded across the southern half of the basement. The main floor originally housed city offices, the Board of City Development, a public library, and assembly rooms. The second (top) floor featured an auditorium with 1,000 seating capacity, a kitchen and several more offices.

Pampa City Hall meets Criterion A, in the areas of Politics/Government, for its role as the center of local government, as part of an organized civic building program spurred by the influx of oil and industry money, and the community leaders' desire to create a well-planned civic center. Upon completion, the edifice served as a tribute to Pampa's meteoric rise from a railroad stop to the second-largest city in the Panhandle in 1930, and the commercial and industrial hub of the Eastern Panhandle. The building meets Criterion C in the area of Architecture, as an excellent example of Beaux Arts civic architecture in the region.

The Pampa City Hall, a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark (1986) is one of the key structures in the core of Pampa. The building retains its integrity of location, setting, workmanship, materials, design, feeling, and association, and has been designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. The citizens and leaders of Pampa and Gray County have retained the original character of "Million Dollar Row," making a few changes to update the interior of the buildings, installing a handicapped accessible ramp and an elevator, removal of cluttered wires and pipes, new landscaping and redesigning the parking area. When expansion became necessary, additional buildings were erected or acquired elsewhere, while keeping the original buildings for continued use, a lasting tribute to the architectural grandeur and booming economy of an earlier period.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1999.