In the late 1800s, the Town of Addison emerged with the building of a rail line by the Cotton Belt rail line, formerly known as the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas Railway Company. Known only at the time as Noell Junction after S.S. Noell, a charter member of the Addison Methodist Church who donated the original plot of land to the railroad, the Town flourished and grew. Near the turn of the century, the name of the town was changed to Addison, after Addison Robertson, a local farmer, Civil War veteran, and postmaster.
In 1914, the Addison School building was constructed to accommodate the Town’s thriving population and it still stands almost 100 years later off Belt Line Road as the Magic Time Machine Restaurant. Since its inception, the Addison School building has hosted a number of community organizations such as the Home Demonstration Club and various Addison churches. Intended as an instructional resource for Addison homemakers, Demonstration activities included mattress making, first aid, sewing, canning, tailoring and pruning fruit-bearing trees.
Part of the 30 other Dallas County chapters, members of the Addison Home Demonstration Club learned skills that would turn out to be especially useful during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both the Addison Baptist and Methodist churches also used the Addison School building to hold services before the churches were built.
The building itself is tiny, consisting of three downstairs classrooms with an auditorium on the second floor. The school was originally surrounded by a large playground, where the students traditionally separated into girls’ and boys’ sides. The boys played on the baseball diamond and basketball hoops while the girls played on the swings and merry-go-rounds. There was no indoor plumbing, and the building was heated by one coal burning stove.
Initially a county school, Addison School served the children of local farmers. Children walked to school, although a bus service was later offered. It was not uncommon to see Model T cars parked outside the school along with horses that were hitched to posts. Robert L. McCallum graduated from Addison School in 1958, before the industrial growth of the 1970s. Back then, his nearest neighbors were half a mile away and there were no houses along Arapaho or Preston Road. He eventually went on to SMU Law School, but he still fondly recalls his boyhood days as a student in Addison.
“It was fun,” McCallum says. “My father had several hundred acres and it kept me from having to work on the farm. We had a baseball team and a 4H club. It was a very enjoyable time. Ms. Goodman was the principal out there. She was a nice principal, a very nice lady, and she cared about the kids.”
Lucile Goodman, wife of C.V. Goodman and cousin of President Harry S. Truman, was a lifelong resident of Dallas County and a fixture in its educational systems. She taught at Addison School from 1921 to 1954, served as principal from 1935 to 1954, and retired from Garland Independent School District in 1960. In 1996, she was selected by the Addison City Council as the Woman of the Year.
“Back then,” McCallum explains, “teachers that taught in Dallas ISD, their spouses could not teach in the same school district. Addison had really great teachers because they usually had spouses that taught in the Dallas schools. I think I got a very good starting education. I know it was a lot better than what the kids nowadays are getting. [It was] lots of basic reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
Spouses may not have been able to teach in the same school district, but the Goodmans were the exception to the rule. In fact, in its early days Addison School was more of a family affair. When the couple came to teach at the little school in 1921, C.V. served as high school teacher, basketball coach and principal while Lucile taught elementary school. When C.V. left teaching to open the Noell-Goodman Drug Store, Lucille’s sister Adda Summer served as principal until 1935 when she passed the torch to Lucille. The school remained county-controlled until 1954, when the county voted to make Addison School part of Dallas Independent School District.
Despite its diminutive size, the Addison School building represented a vital part of the community until the school closed its doors in 1964 due to low enrollment. The building was later taken over by the Magic Time Machine Restaurant, which hosts an annual spring Addison School Alumni luncheon. For 50 years, the Addison School building served as the heartbeat of the Addison community. The building has continuously brought together the residents of Addison from homemakers, to churchgoers, to children, and even reached beyond its borders to students who traveled from other communities to attend school. Today, it still brings families and friends together, continuing the legacy of unity that has been a part of the Addison School building for almost a century.
Georgia is a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas with a degree in Literary Studies. An adventurous soul with a writing habit she just can’t seem to kick, her aim is to see everything the world has to offer. When she isn’t combing the city for new and wonderful hot spots, you can find her–suitcase in one hand, camera in the other–off on her next big adventure.
