Bellville Gymnastics Club Pavilion
The Bellville Gymnastics Club Pavilion is a hall built for social events in the small Texas town of Bellville . It was built between 1895 and 1897 on behalf of the local gymnastics club Gut Heil according to plans by the building contractor Joachim Hintz.
The pavilion stands in a prominent urban location on a small hill on the eastern edge of the city and thus forms a visual reference to the Austin County Courthouse, which is also built on a hill in the city center .
history
At the end of the 19th century, the city's social activities were organized into two clubs, the Bellville Social Club and the Bellville Gymnastics Club Gut Heil . The Social Club bought the property on East Main Street from Herman Miller in 1883 and planned to build an event building. Two years later, the Gut Heil gymnastics club was founded. The opera house built by him in 1889 soon became the center of social life in the city.
In 1895 the gymnastics club acquired the site of the Social Club and commissioned the local building contractor Joachim Hintz to build a club's own pavilion. Modeled on other halls in Austin County , a single-story building was built on a polygonal floor plan, spanned by a tent roof . For the construction of the twelve-sided building, extra-long wooden beams were used, which were delivered directly from the sawmill. The pavilion became the main venue for celebrations and social activities in the years that followed.
In 1937, the City of Bellville acquired the building and land and held a competition among students at Texas A&M University to redesign the park. With the help of a grant from the Federal Works Progress Administration , the winning design was realized. The park received new facilities and the interior of the pavilion was modernized.
The building was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1996.
source
- Historical marker of the Texas Historical Commission (established 1996)
Coordinates: 29 ° 56 '46.4 " N , 96 ° 14' 49.3" W.