Jayton Bank Restored to Historic Proportions

Residents Remember Building As Mainstay of Community

By MACK HARRISON Avalanche-Journal

JAYTON - For Sue Clifton, working in the newly restored bank building in Jayton is like coming home. ''I can remember (coming to the bank) as a little girl,'' Clifton, the bookkeeper at Kent County State Bank, said. ''I spent half my life on the front porch. Everybody in town had their initials on that front porch.''

What was once the center of social life in Jayton slowly fell victim to the ravages of time. The bank, founded in 1907 by Robert Goodall, one of Kent County's first commissioners, failed in 1932. Another financial institution operated in the building until 1943.

Over the years, the building also served as the location for the town post office, the county courthouse and an insurance agency.

Kent County State Bank, which is housed in a modern building that shares a wall with the old bank, bought the structure in the 1970s and used it for storage.

But it wasn't until recently that bank officials decided to restore the 80-year-old building to its original purpose.

The bank's board of directors had considered constructing a new building, but decided to renovate the older structure instead.

''We were running out of space,'' bank President Berylecq Murdoch said. ''Building an addition to this (new) building would have saved money. The board got together and was interested in saving some of our history.''

Robert Hall, a member of Kent County State Bank's board of directors, said board members realized the importance of the historic structure.

''We got to thinking about the unique part of it and decided it would be worthwhile,'' Hall said.

The building was constructed in 1912 - although some records suggest it wasn't finished until 1915 - and housed the First Bank of Jayton. Because the old bank records disappeared no one knows who designed or built the structure.

The bank building is the only example of architecture that remains from the era of the town's founding.

Sunlight streamed in from a circular skylight of leaded glass as Murdoch described how the interior of the old bank looked before restoration efforts began.

Time and the elements had turned the interior oak paneling and beams black with age, and the woodwork on the outside of the building wore several coats of white paint. Water damage had stained the ceiling. The skylight had been painted over with gold paint.

''When we started on it, we had no idea what it was going to look like,'' Murdoch said. Now, polish brings out the deep brown grain of the original oak woodwork. And the original windows, also of leaded glass with beveled borders, look in on the counters and barred windows that served banking customers so many years ago. ''They don't build buildings like this any more,'' Murdoch said.

Hall said it cost the bank more than $200,000 to restore the old building to its former glory and another $150,000 to remodel its modern offices and put an opening in the wall the two structures share.

''When I came here 42 years ago, they were using that old building for a courthouse,'' Hall said. ''I've been all around this part of the country. I don't know of any bank building left ... that's still being used as a bank.''

Hall said he thinks someone slapped paint on the skylight to keep the West Texas sun from warming the building in the days without air conditioning. ''I can't imagine anyone painting over something that pretty,'' Hall said of the skylight.

In the bank's board room, a beveled glass mirror sits over the fireplace. Two small murals painted in the 1930s look out over the hardwood floor.

An architectural firm from Abilene began the restoration in February 1996 and wrapped it up the first part of December. ''Everybody is well pleased with how it turned out,'' Murdoch said of the bank building's face lift. ''It was kind of hard to visualize (from the old photographs).''

Murdoch showed a reporter a photograph of the bank taken during its first years of operation. In the picture, three men in vests stare, without smiles, at the camera as mounted deer heads peer down at them and a single electric bulb, much larger than today's versions, hangs from the ceiling.

Clifton, a present-day employee, said she has fond memories of the financial institution. Her grandfather served as president and her brother also worked at the bank. She said children would relax in the shade of the porch while their parents conducted business inside the building.

''I was always here,'' Clifton said as she sat on the porch where her initials have long since vanished. ''It was just the place at one time. ... ''It was shady, cool and comfortable,'' she said. ''I'd sit here for hours.''

The community is asking the National Park Service and the Texas Historical Commission to designate the building as a historical landmark. ''It's been a real pleasure, the acceptance of the community and their pride in the old building,'' Murdoch said. ''It's been an interesting year and a lot of fun working on this.''

© 1996 Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Some material ©1996 The Associated Press 

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Searching for Stuckey:

Man pieces together path of architect

Hanaba Munn Noack, Times Record News

ABILENE, Texas -- Some crumbling blueprints, a dome-skylight in a landmark Texas church and one woman's family memories are like missing puzzle pieces for Abilene architect Hubert Welch.

Piece by interlocking piece, he's snapping together bits of information on the late Henry Stuckey -- a turn-of-the-century Indiana-born architect who left his mark across Texas. Gradually, Welch is putting together the big picture.

He has been on Stuckey's trail since last year when his firm, McCathren Associates, renovated the old corner bank in Jayton, Texas, now part of Kent County State Bank. Lately the trail has taken him to North Texas -- to Vernon and Quanah -- and to Chillicothe, where Stuckey once lived.

Welch is compiling information on the Jayton bank to submit to the Texas Historical Commission. He wants to see it listed on the National Register of Historic Places -- or at least to see it named a Texas Historic Landmark.

But with no cornerstone to identify the architect or builder, the solidly built one-story brick structure is like an unsigned painting.

If Stuckey -- or someone else -- can be identified as the architect, the bank stands a better chance of getting the coveted designations.

Without building plans or other equally valid documentation, Welch is left only with clues. But the more clues he puts together, the more he is convinced Stuckey, who lived from 1855 to 1936, is the mystery architect.

The first really helpful lead came from someone who saw stories and pictures in the Abilene Reporter-News about the Jayton bank renovation.

"Someone mentioned . . . Quanah," Welch said. "I just knew there was a church in Quanah with stained glass similar to what they had seen in the papers locally."

When another architectural project took Welch to the Quanah area, he stopped to look at the Hardeman County town's older churches, searching for the one that might help him identify the Jayton bank architect.

On Main Street, he found First Presbyterian Church, a domed gray-and-white stucco in a subdued version of the vibrant Beaux-Arts style. The church's Texas Historic Landmark plaque identified Henry Stuckey as the architect.

Welch found no one to unlock the church for him, so he contented himself with looking at the exterior and filing away the name of Henry Stuckey.

If Welch could have gone inside the church that day, he would have seen a striking Stuckeyesque architectural feature - an octagon of stained glass in the sanctuary ceiling filtering light from the windows in the church's dome. And he would have noted the similarity of the octagon to the circle of stained glass panels beneath the skylight in the Jayton bank lobby.

Although he missed fastening onto that piece of the puzzle that day, the plaque alone was enough to put him on Stuckey's trail.

"I felt like I had discovered a very key piece of information that was going to assist me on the Jayton bank," he said. "I picked up on the Stuckey name and started chasing it around."

In Jayton, he did find the Stuckey name on a legal document from 1915 -- but the name was not Henry Stuckey. It was Roy F. Stuckey's mechanic's lien against Oscar Swinburn and the bank for $109.99.

Later, he learned that Roy Stuckey was one of Henry Stuckey's five sons, all skilled in building trades and all of whom worked for their father at one time or another.

Welch asked the Texas Historic Commission for more information on the Presbyterian Church in Quanah. The THC put him in contact with Carolyn Eggleston in Quanah, who told him about other Stuckey buildings in the area. And he saw a photo of the stained-glass panels in the church ceiling -- a confirmation that he was following the right string of clues.

Through further research, he learned that another church by Stuckey -- First United Methodist in Chillicothe -- had a dome-stained glass combination similar to the Presbyterian Church in nearby Quanah.

The Chillicothe church -- built of dark red brick -- dates from 1916. Design-wise, rusticated pillars tie it to the Jayton bank.

In Chillicothe, Welch talked to Brent Haynes, a local landscape architect who has worked to preserve Chillicothe's tallest downtown building, the three-story brick-and-stone structure known as the Masonic Building. As in Jayton, the corner building originally housed a bank at ground level.

Haynes shared with Welch old blueprints drawn up by Henry Stuckey. The drawings show the building both in its original two-story form and in its present three-story form.

On the blueprints, Welch immediately spotted a flourish in the trim on the Chillicothe building that exactly matches the design of the trim on the facade of the Jayton building -- a feature that emphasizes the vertical lines of the classic columns that flank the entrance to the Jayton building.

"In Jayton, they accentuated the vertical because the bank was looking for that image of stability, steadiness," Welch said. "All of the history that I have read will say almost without exception that they used a classical building style because that classical style did in fact bring to that building those very characteristics they wanted."

Welch had one more piece for his puzzle.

"Until I had seen the drawings of the Chillicothe bank, particularly the third-floor stuff, I had not seen in the other work of Stuckey anything that was an exact fit," he said.

But his most convincing piece of information could come from yet another source -- one of Henry Stuckey's sons.

In Vernon, Welch located Glennie Stuckey, who was married to the late J.F. Stuckey, one of Henry Stuckey's sons. She told Welch that Henry Stuckey's next-to-youngest son, Fred -- now 92 -- lives in Rogers, Ark.

Fred Stuckey would have been only 7 to 10 years old when the bank in Jayton was built. But Welch will be calling him next to ask what he remembers about the Stuckey family's role in the bank's design and construction.

If Fred Stuckey remembers Jayton, Welch will snap another piece into the puzzle.

If he's like the rest of the Stuckey clan, he'll tell Welch just what he knows -- no more -- as unlikely to embellish the story as his father would have been to load a building with useless ornamentation.

"The Stuckeys didn't talk too much about their work or anything," Glennie Stuckey said. "You didn't learn much from them."

Regional Staff Writer Hanaba Munn Noack can be reached at 800-627-1646 or 940-767-8341, ext.597.

©1996 Times Publishing

(If anyone has any information about the original architect and design of this building,
please e-mail me.)

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