An armory at the corner

On November 10, 1940 the Chronicle announced that Max Autrey Post 52 of the Texas Defense Guard would drill “Wednesday at 7:30 at Harvard and Eleventh (111th Engineers’ Armory), instead of Main and Holman.” Company F of the 111th Engineers, Houston’s own company of the 36th Division, was inducted into federal service on November 25, and on December 4 Major General Claude V. Birkhead inspected the men as they pitched pup tents “at their armory, Eleventh and Harvard.”

Which building at the corner served as the armory’s drill hall is not proven. The Chronicle’s photograph of the inspection shows a light-colored two-story building with plain rows of sash windows behind the tents, not the pilastered brick temple, and the record carries other halls at the same intersection in these years: a Woodmen of the World hall in 1934 and an Odd Fellows hall in 1939. The December 1941 burglary report does place an office of the 111th Engineers inside this building. The armory belongs to the corner; how much of it was inside these walls is an open question.

The same year, the exiled lodge bought the northeast corner of Heights Boulevard and Sixteenth from Dr. T. G. Synnott for $3,600, the site of its future hall.