Anita Quintanilla said she was a shining student at Palm School during the 1961-62 school year. As a sixth grader in a class made up of mostly Mexican-Americans like herself and African-Americans, Quintanilla lived on the unpaved Rainey Street and walked to school, spending her summers at the Palm Park swimming pool, which opened to Mexican-Americans in the 1950s. “I always considered myself a country girl,” she said. Quintanilla may have been taught by Cleora Kinney, who—although she lived in Southwest Austin—taught at Palm School full time and as a substitute teacher in the late 1940s and 1950s. Palm School served as Austin’s second elementary school for 82 years.[/caption] “I think she had a particular sort of place in her heart for the Mexican-American community,” Cleora’s son, Girard Kinney, said of his mother. More than 70 years later, people like Quintanilla and Kinney want to see the second-oldest Austin elementary school preserved.

The many values of Palm School

A decision on what to do with the historic Palm School looms. The Travis County-owned building currently houses the county’s departments of health, human and veteran services, but those departments will vacate Palm School in 2019 and move to a new building on Airport Boulevard. In April, Travis County will select a forensic architecture team that will spend the spring and summer formulating a historic structure report of the building, according to Mark Gilbert, managing director of economic and strategic planning for the county. The report will provide a full narrative of the building’s history, which will allow the county to determine its financial value and document the building’s architectural elements, accessibility and safety issues. Several stakeholders have expressed their interest in what the building should be used for—the school’s location in the Convention Center District makes it valuable to the tourism industry—but some Austinites are calling for the building to be preserved as a museum or used for local purposes. “It has monetary value, obviously,” said Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt at a recent town hall meeting. “It’s a pretty hot block, and I think we all know that. But it also has historic value to our community and those two things are not mutually exclusive. I believe that we can find balance between the monetary value and community value by loading up the property with restrictive covenants.” The building has the potential to gain historic designation—the property is currently zoned as combined community commercial and historic, with several zoning overlays. It already has Austin Historic Landmark designation but could be a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, a State Antiquities Landmark or a National Register Property, depending on what the historical and architectural survey results yield. “I’m very, very interested in the adaptive reuse of that building,” said Kinney, a historic preservationist and lifelong Austinite. Quintanilla said she wants to see the building used as a Mexican-American museum. Mary Guerrero-McDonald, who heads the Building Owners and Management Association in Austin, said she wants Palm School to stay open and be of use to the community. She said she doesn't want to see Palm School destroyed or turned over to a private developer. "I just want it utilized," she said.

A reimagined park

A construction worker takes a break at Palm Park.[/caption] Adjacent to Palm School sits the city-owned Palm Park, which environmental nonprofit Waller Creek Conservancy seeks to revitalize, hopefully in accordance with Palm School. “It’s extremely arbitrary to think about Palm Park without Palm School,” said Melba Whatley, president of WCC. WCC’s architects in February produced designs showing what the park would look like if Palm School were incorporated into the park’s natural elements. The parking lot disappears, replaced by pedestrian walkways, trees and wildflowers. The conservancy is now seeking money from investors for the park, and Whatley said WCC wants to move forward with the design and construction, regardless of what Travis County and the city of Austin decide to do with Palm School. “What would be so sad is if we designed [the park] and built it without knowing whether we were going to get the school or not,” Whatley said.

From armory to elementary school

The school’s history dates back to 1839 when the building was constructed as an armory for the Republic of Texas and used to protect the fields east of what is now I-35, according to Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez. In 1845, Texas became a state, and the building was turned over to the federal government. It was given to the newly formed Austin ISD board of trustees in 1887 and became Austin’s second elementary school in 1892, serving mostly Mexican-American students, with some Swedes and Anglo-Saxons, for 82 years, Gómez said. In 1980, the school was sold and used as office space until 1986 when it was acquired by Travis County, which currently houses its Health and Human Services and Veterans Services departments in it. Gómez, who helped lead the charge to start looking into what the building could be used for, said she wants to historically preserve the building and the people who walked through its halls throughout the years. “I don’t want anyone to be erased from the memory of Austin or Travis County,” Gómez said.