National Register of Historic Places
Killeen Downtown Historic District
Killeen, Bell County, Texas
The record
- Listed
- March 31, 2014
- Type
- Historic district
- Address
- Roughly bounded by Ave. A, Santa Fe Plaza, N. 4th & N. 8th Sts., Killeen
- County
- Bell
- State
- Texas
- Contributing resources
- 45 buildings
- Coordinates
- 31.12293, -97.72751
- Reference number
- 14000098
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.
The outline is the area recorded for this listing in National Park Service map data, drawn approximately.
USGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries
The story
Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com
The Killeen Downtown Historic District is a historic district in Killeen, Bell County, Texas, roughly bounded by Avenue A, Santa Fe Plaza, and North 4th and North 8th Streets. Its 45 contributing buildings show styles from Romanesque Revival and Greek Revival to Craftsman, Classical Revival, and Postwar Modern.
Why it's listed
It was listed under criteria A and C, with local-level significance in exploration and settlement, military history, and architecture. Its period of significance runs from 1895, when the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad arrived and platted the townsite, to 1964.
Physical character
Walls are brick, stone, and stucco, with corbelled brick along the cornices, arched and segmental-arched window openings, and cast iron pilasters at some entrances. Many buildings lost original features in the 1920s and 1950s, when storefronts were altered and rebuilt, window openings were boarded up, truncated, or infilled, and facades were painted or stuccoed over.
Historical context
The townsite was platted as a railroad terminus in 1882 and named for Frank P. Killeen. In 1942 Camp Hood opened nearby and construction workers flocked to Killeen for the work; the two-story Graystone Hotel was built that year to house the overflow. Camp Hood was recommissioned as Fort Hood in 1950, the year Killeen's population more than doubled to 7,045. A postwar building boom that ran from 1942 to 1963 added more than ninety-five new commercial buildings between 1950 and 1951.