Historic Calvert wants visitors to slow down and linger a while
CALVERT — Loitering at an intersection on Main Street (otherwise known as Texas 6) in this historic hamlet halfway between Bryan-College Station and Waco, I watch a tractor-trailer loaded with live chickens try to merge into northbound traffic. I’m thinking that if those doomed birds somehow escaped their crowded crates and tried to cross the road, as chickens are wont to do, they’d meet their demise much sooner than planned.
“Slow down!” I want to shout at tractor-trailers loaded with gravel, huge trucks ferrying what appears to be oil field equipment and, of course, pickups and cars roaring past Under the Chandelier gift shop, Mud Creek Pottery, Common Scents Saloon and other small businesses in the historic downtown district. Sarah Stem, owner of an attractive antique shop called Southern Plantation Studios and vice president of the Calvert Chamber of Commerce, tells me she feels like she takes her life into her hands whenever she crosses the street to her business on the west side of Texas 6.
Calvert, celebrating its 150th anniversary next weekend, is worth slowing down for — and not just to be safe or to avoid the two police cruisers invariably lurking at both ends of its stretch of Texas 6. In its historic residential district east of Main Street are some of the most gracious Victorian and early-20th century homes you’ll find anywhere in small-town Texas.
A number have been lovingly restored in recent years by Dallasites, Houstonians and other urbanites looking for a slower pace of life (as long as they stay off the highway). Other historic homes have passed down from one generation to the next. The Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyterian church buildings (all still in use), the Masonic Lodge building, a bank building that’s now City Hall, a Victorian bandstand built in 1895 and eight blocks of storefronts along Main Street all have a past.
Belle Starr, the notorious “Bandit Queen,” passed this way; her father owned a livery stable during the Civil War. Tex McCrary was born here. A New York public relations man and political strategist, he and his wife, Jinx Falkenberg, hosted the first radio talk show, “Meet Tex and Jinx” in the 1940s and ’50s. The late Tom Bradley was born in a log cabin on the edge of town. The grandson of slaves and the son of poor sharecroppers, Bradley served five terms as mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 1993.
What you can say about a lot of small Texas towns, you can say about Calvert: there was a time when. There was a time when Calvert was one of the
largest towns in the state, with a population of about 4,000; a time when it was a prosperous railroad town, home to hotels, restaurants, a spacious opera house and briefly the Robertson County Courthouse; when the Gibson Gin & Oil Co. on Main Street was the largest cotton gin in the world.
Until a fire destroyed the gin in 1965 — only an office and weigh station remain — the slow, chug-chug-chug of steam (and, later, diesel) engines turning the giant flywheel was the background sound of everyday life in Calvert. Louise Grigsby, who moved back to her childhood home after 35 years in Houston, recalls that the steady noise soothed her when she went to sleep at night as a little girl. Twenty years after coming home, she runs a real estate business, serves on the school board and works to keep her beloved hometown alive.
Roots in cotton
The gin was an ever-present reminder that Calvert owes its origins to King Cotton. The original settlers were southern planters drawn to the fertile Brazos River bottomlands. Their plantations averaged 1,500 acres and relied on the hard work of at least 20 slaves.
Robert Calvert, a planter from Arkansas who owned thousands of acres along the Brazos, persuaded the Houston and Texas Central Railway to build a rail link, which drastically cut shipping times to market in Houston. Hauling cotton bales via ox cart took about two weeks, one way; a freight train took a half day.
Working with a consortium of Houston businessmen, including William Marsh Rice, Calvert acquired 1,107 acres of relatively flat land for a town site 3 miles west of the river and conveniently adjacent to his plantation. He died in 1867; the town was named in his honor when the railroad arrived the next year. Area plantation owners built a number of Calvert’s beautiful homes, in part because the town was secure from the floods that frequently inundated the bottomland.
“Cotton produced Calvert’s wealth; it also sealed its fate,” architectural historian John S. Garner wrote in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly some years back. “Those enterprising planters and merchants who were quick to realize the profits of a single-crop economy, and who devoted their full attention to its potential, were also blinded by its promise. The town sought no other industries; nor did public institutions locate there — in spite of the fact that it was the largest town in the county. When the cotton industry became unstable, the town suffered.”
Another Fredericksburg
In recent years, Calvert residents have banked their community’s future on its past. The beautiful homes under spreading live oaks and the charming antique shops along Main Street attract visitors, including a goodly number making the pilgrimage to Magnolia Market at the Silos, Chip and Joanne Gaines’ home-decor empire in Waco.
“We welcome old-house and old-building nuts,” Mike Hensarling told me, taking a break from renovating the back porch of the magnificent Gibson House he and his wife, Elaine, bought when they moved from College Station 25 years ago. John H. Gibson, the cotton-gin owner, built the house in about 1902.
“I would like to see Calvert become another Fredericksburg, with more shops, more tourists,” said Brenda Van de Walle, who owns Under the Chandelier and serves as the Chamber’s president. “If (the Texas Department of Transportation) would lower the speed limit, the way they did in Fredericksburg, it would make a huge difference. Or maybe they could put in two blinking lights. That would slow it down.”
The little town has challenges to deal with, in addition to the speeding traffic. Texas 6 separates black Calvert from white Calvert like a straightedge, and the twain don’t seem to meet. The tiny school district is perennially problematic, and neighboring districts cherry-pick Calvert’s most promising students. Despite Calvert’s charm, families with children are reluctant to move in.
Still, it’s an alluring little town. Residents are hoping that next weekend’s all-day festival, complete with historic home tours, a parade, an outdoor evening concert and a fireworks display, will entice visitors interested in staying.
“Calvert has more history than most, good and bad,” Mike Hensarling said . A construction engineer and connoisseur of old houses, he believes the little town’s past is something worth celebrating, something worth building on.
If visitors slow down long enough, they just might agree.