National Register Listing

Community Center

a.k.a. Site #21

1192 Angelina St., Austin, TX

The Community Center is an intact public building whose simplified Mission Revival style is most unusual in East Austin. Plans for the Center began in 1927 when seven Negro federated clubs united to form the Community Welfare Association, a group intent on being a benevolent, charitable, health, and educational organization. The building on Angelina Street was an outgrowth of their recognition of the need for a place where various Negro clubs could meet and where residents of the community could obtain health care. The Club was constructed in 1929-1930; activities which occurred there after its opening included milk distribution to families, providing of a nursery school (which Home Economics students at nearby Black colleges and public schools could observe), parental education classes, and establishment of a well-baby clinic.

Local significance of the building:
Architecture; Social History

Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.