Quilt returns to district headquarters
Teachers’ needlework on display in HWM cafeteria
Stop by the Hattie Mae White’s Marketplace Café, and you’ll see a new addition to the walls. Hanging in the sitting area is a quilt crafted by more than 40 retired educators more than 40 years ago. The amazing piece of needlework originally hung at the old district headquarters off Richmond Avenue.
The quilt is seven feet tall by twelve feet long and was sewn by a group of retired HISD educators for America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. It was meant to be “a gift from the teachers of yesteryear to the teachers of today and tomorrow,” according to the late Hester Ruth Edwards, who was chairman of the committee that created it.
The quilt is entitled “Education in Houston at the Turn of the Century” and depicts downtown Houston by Buffalo Bayou between the years of 1895 and 1910. Along with many Houston buildings no longer in existence, the quilt depicts several typical Victorian-style homes and seven schools near the downtown area. Three of the schools still exist in HISD, though they now operate in different locations: Longfellow and Sherman elementary schools and Washington High School.
