So many of the places 81-year-old Jo Ann Baker Weaver recalls from her days as a teenager — when she was juggling high school classes with a part-time job while living downtown in the 1940s — have vanished into the past:

*  Waco Academy, where she went to school — gone. A private high school founded by the Methodist Church in 1856, the downtown institution folded more than a century later.

*  Hill Printing and Stationery Co., where she worked after school — gone. Founded in the 1890s as Byrne-Hill Printing House, the business is long defunct.

It was fun to stay at the YWCA, according to Jo Ann Baker Weaver, 81. Weaver was 17 years old when she and other young ladies of modest means roomed at the facility on Austin Avenue at 15th Street. She is seen in the center of the photo, sitting on the floor under the Christmas tree in 1946 behind her 4-year-old sister, Aggie.
Aggie Poe photo

*  The Purple Cow, the coffee shop in the lobby of the Raleigh Hotel, where she sometimes ate — gone. The circa 1913 structure is still the anchor of Austin Avenue at Eighth Street, but it is now a state office building.

*  Across the street, the Bauer-McCann Department Store, where she couldn’t afford to shop — gone. The building is now home to The Palladium, an event venue, which operates in the circa-1895 facility.

“It always had the most beautiful shop windows, especially at Christmas,” Weaver said. “Back in those days, we weren’t afraid to walk downtown at night.”

*  The YWCA dormitory where she lived, at 1503 Austin Ave. — gone.

The address is worn by Sironia’s now, but in the mid-20th century it was attached to a two-story family home next to the Hamilton House, 1521 Austin Ave., that had been purchased from a local family in the 1920s.

Weaver said she couldn’t recall when it was demolished, but it was likely during the 1960s, when federal urban renewal dollars were more plentiful.

“It was a big, old, beautiful home,” Weaver said. “It had room for 12 girls, two to a room.”

If more room was needed until a bedroom vacancy opened up, she said, the canvas sides of the “sleeping porch” were dropped to make more spaces for the young ladies of modest means who needed affordable housing.

*  The Young Women’s Christian Association itself — gone. The organization voted to fold on June 30, 1997, after serving the Greater Waco area for more than 80 years.

The Blue Triangle branch of the YWCA, founded in East Waco in 1937 to serve the black community, was closed that same year after its building was sold to become a private day-care operation.

Weaver reminisced about the old YWCA house after her sister, Aggie Poe, of Valley Mills, sent a photograph to the Tribune-Herald depicting the Christmas Day gathering there in 1946.

The picture shows a house mother on one side with 15 residents arrayed around her, as well as one young woman’s boyfriend in the background, shaking a present.

The image also captures a small blonde moppet (Aggie Poe, who was 4 years old at the time) and a black child, grandson of the household’s cook, Ethel.

“I remember getting to visit my sister,” Poe said, “and the nice little finger sandwiches and Christmas cookies. And one gal invited her boyfriend over. They later got married.”

Weaver, who was 17 years old when she lived at the Y, said that “Ethel made the best hot rolls.”

The local YWCA was formed in Waco in 1916 in the home of Mrs. J.R. Milam Sr., according to the files from the Tribune-Herald .

The first location was at 608 Franklin Ave., where a lounge, club room and cafeteria served the girls, but the residence itself was on North Fourth Street.

As the program expanded, it kept moving. The working women of the textile mills in the 1930s kept the organization going during the Great Depression.

A call was put out for life memberships at $100 each, which provided the $2,000 down payment to buy the frame home at 1503 Austin Ave.

Mrs. A.M. Goldstein’s parents lived next door and when her father, Sol Hirschberg, died in 1946, he left $2,000 to the YWCA.

The funds were matched by other local businessmen to liquidate the debt on the home.

The dormitory stayed there until 1949, when the Albert C. Clifton residence at 2600 Austin Ave. was acquired.

That house has been the home of the Junior League of Waco since 1995. It was purchased in 1989 with a grant from The Cooper Foundation and extensively renovated.

Nationally, the Young Women’s Christian Association celebrated its sesquicentennial two years ago.

Founded in New York City in 1858 as the Ladies Christian Association, it opened its first boarding house for working women in 1860.

The YWCA name was first used in Boston after the Civil War.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

757-5746