The two-lane, asphalt country road was a perfect place to build a cottage and raise a family on the outskirts of the city.
Veterans returning from World War II got G.I. Bill loans to buy the cottages. Some of the houses surrounded a small lake in a park along the two-mile country road that ran northward from Park Avenue.
Today, that country roadway is a sprawling state highway running through the middle of Orange. Some of the houses still stand and have been turned into offices. Restaurants, major chain stores, and locally-owned businesses line the thoroughfare.
Sixteenth Street in Orange has changed through the decades will little planning. Now, the Orange City Council has set a priority for cleaning up and improving the appearance of the hodge-podge of buildings.
Adults from Generation X and the Millennials may find it hard to believe that 16th Street did not run from Green Avenue until 1975. Motorists going westbound on Green Avenue (also The Old Spanish Trail or U.S. Highway 90), had to turn north at 15th Street and travel past the old Tiger football stadium to Park Avenue. Then they turned west on Park, which became Old U.S. 90. If they wanted to go northward, they turned north onto Sixteenth Street.
Interstate 10 opened in the late 1950s. By that time, Sixteenth Street, or Texas Highway 87, had been extended northward, replacing what was once known as the “Deweyville Road.”
The year 1917 is the oldest Orange City Directory in the reference collection of the Orange Public Library. The directory does have a listing for Sixteenth Street, which may indicate the street north of Park Avenue was not inside the city limits.
The 1922 director has a few houses on Sixthteenth Street north of Park, including 1509 16th Street as the Salvation Army Emergency House. The director has Hart and Burton avenues ending at Sixteenth with Rein Avenue having an intersection.
Roberts Grocery is listed at 1705 16th Street, about where Spanky’s Restaurant is today. The directory of addresses ended with a house at 1711 16th Street, once again, a possible indication that the city limits stopped there.
The library does not have city directories from the 1930s. But by the time World War ll began in 1941, the city had been spreading northward with woodframe cottages being built.
The Orange Leader in its birth announcements on April 28, 1943, announced the birth of John Oliver Creighton, whose parents lived at 2303 16th Street. Creighton did not grow up in Orange because his father was in town for the war effort. Creighton became an astronaut and shuttle pilot.
Sixteenth Street was still a two-lane asphalt road and the cottages had front yards that would be 15 feet, of more, wider than the tiny yards seen on those houses today.
The 1944 city directory runs northward on to 2420 Sixteenth Street, to the south of the current HEB. Houses are listed along both sides, with a small store scattered here and there. Floyd Hilsman had the Lilliput Links golf course at 1101 16th Street by his house.
Fuller Service Station for many years was on Park Avenue where Sixteenth Street ended.
Shops and businesses were numerous in the 1953 directory. The Baby Boom had hit Orange with young families. The old Orange Independent School District built George D. Jones Elementary School in 1952 to serve the northward grown. Kids from surrounding new subdivisions, including Clairmont to the east, road bikes or walked to the school.
Hundreds of those kids lived west of Sixteenth Street, still an asphalt road. They were required to cross Sixteenth Street at Link Avenue, which ran on the side of Jones on Fourteenth Street. A paid crossing guard helped the children cross Sixteenth Street during morning and afternoon times.
The Sunset Park addition was built around a park that was bordered on the west side by Sixteenth Street. At one time, a small lake (or a large pond) was in the middle of the park, which is why a street was named Lakeside Drive. Photographs from the Heritage House Museum local history collection show kids lined up along the lake fishing. A tall, chain-link fence surrounds the lake. Long streams of Spanish moss drape from the trees in the background.
The water was drained and the lake was filled in sometime during the mid-1950s.
The 1960 city director shows even more businesses and offices, including one for Drs. Billie and Homer Stuntz, a husband and wife team of medical doctors, at 1214 16th Street. Aladdin Flowers was at 1003 and the Sanders Apartments were at 1213.
Cliff’s Seven-Eleven Grocery was at the corner of Sixteenth and Link, 1702, where the Comtex Wireless store is today.
Other businesses northward on 16th Street included Ball’s Apothecary Drugs, 2940; Fritz’s Better Burgers, 2945; Parkie’s Drive-In Grocery, 2948; Butch’s Drive-In Grocery, 3129; Mac’s Barbecue and Anthony’s Drive-In Grocery at 3129, which the directory marks as the intersection with Lincoln Drive.
A major fire in downtown Orange affected the development of Sixteenth Street as a commercial area. Henke and Pillot had a large supermarket on Green Avenue where Stark Park is today. The store was built at the end of World War II, but a fire destroyed it.
The store, known simply as “Henke’s,” became part of the Kroger’s chain. The Henke’s Discount Grocery Store opened on Sixteenth Street between Burton and Link. The store still stands today.
Originally, Henke’s was more like a contemporary Super Walmart. It had clothes and shoes for every member of the family; household goods including sheets and blankets; an expansive toy department, cosmetic counters, and a record department with 45s and LPs.
Sixteenth Street continued to be a two-lane asphalt road, but plans were already in the works for the expansion. The crossing guard had to stop Jones school students from going into Henke’s, but when school was out, the kids would ride their bikes to the store. The bikes were parked outside without a lock and chain, and were still there when the kids came out of the store.
The 1974 city directory shows Sixteenth Street still did not run from Green to Park. However, much of 16th Street had been widened and paved with concrete. The front yards of the cottages and even the parking lot of Henke’s had shrunk.
Some of the businesses listed included Big Star (grocery) No. 38 at 1100. The Stuntzes’ still had their offices on the street and Sherwin Williams had moved from downtown. Church’s Chicken was at 1322, Town & Country Boutique at 1409, Pitt Grill at 1609, and Cliff’s Seven to Eleven was still at 1702. Trinity Lutheran Church with the AAUW Nursery were at 1819, and First Assembly of God Church was at 1911. James Stringer Realty was at 2315, Taco Rancero at 2945, Parkie’s Drive-In Grocery at 2948, Old Mexico Restaurant at 3024, and Durke’s Burger at 3130.
Child’s Building Supply was on Sixteenth north of Interstate 10 and Northway Shopping Center, which opened in 1970, was full.
The city director listings for the shopping center are Weingarten’s, Starship Gift Shop, Pay-Less Barber and Beauty, Treasure Chest Liquor & Gifts, Kyle’s Fashion, Long’s Tropical Fish, American Health Foods, Eckerd Drugs, Texas State Optical, Zale’s Jewelry, Guarantee Shoe Store, Comal Fabrics, Graves Women’s Clothes, George Wilson, American Fence Company, S.H. Kress, and the Fair Department Store.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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