White Sugar: A Thesis in Architecture Spring 2009 HISTORY SUGAR LAND AND IMPERIAL SUGAR COMPANY

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1 Abstract The original colonist, called the Old Three Hundred, mistook the Brazos River for the Colorado River and set up a makeshift camp, which they named Fort on the Bend. By the mid 1830 s nearly 30,000 Americans had settled various Texas colonies. As the population grew in what is now Fort Bend County, these farming areas became consolidated into large plantations which grew cotton and sugarcane. As the population further increased Fort Bend, Matagorda, and Wharton counties became known as the Sugar Bowl of Texas. The Imperial Sugar Company is the oldest existing business in the state of Texas. While officially consolidated as a private company in 1905, it has operated on the same site since The history of the company begins in the 1840 s when Samuel May Williams became the owner of the Oakland Plantation. In 1853 W J Kyle and Benjamin Terry bought the S M Williams Plantation and named the property Sugar Land. The plantations of Thatcher, Brebard, Borden, where combined with the Kyle and Terry plantation and formed the 12,500 acre Cunningham Plantation. In 1879 Cunningham leased convicts for five years from the State of Texas to help cultivate the local sugar cane crops. He entered in a partnership with Littleberry Ambrose Ellis, owner of the nearby a sugar mill, to start convict farming. In 1896 Cunningham constructed a cane sugar refinery in Sugar Land which was to manufacture 100,000 pounds of sugar a day. In 1906 the Cunningham Plantation and 5,300 adjoining acres of the Ellis Plantation were purchased by I H Kempner of Galveston and W T Eldridge of Eagle Lake. In 1911, the refinery, which was still under the Cunningham name, was leased to the Imperial Sugar Company for a period of ten years. In 1928, the last locally grown sugar cane was processed at Sugar Land and all the raw sugar mills in the area were closed including the Imperial mill. The Imperial Sugar Refinery, now the only sugar manufacturing entity left in Texas, was operating entirely on raw sugar imported through Galveston In the 1920 s Imperial heavily expanded the factory grounds to include a new sugar warehouse in 1824 as well as a new Char House in By 1927, Imperial completed the major parts of its expansion plan with the construction of an additional pan house for boiling sugar syrups. Around this time the first paved road was built which connected Sugar Land to Houston. This diminished the isolation of Sugar Land and many businesses which had been necessary in a self-sufficient community were no longer needed and many began to leave in the early 1930 s. In 1945 Kempner became the sole owner of the Imperial Sugar Company. In 1950 Sugar Land was still a sleepy little company town, centering on the Imperial Sugar refinery which dominated the flat coastal landscape. The Imperial Sugar Company started to sell land to employees who could start immediately on the construction of their new homes. Next, Sugar Land Industries dredged out a system of lakes and waterways and sold three hundred waterfront properties. Located just south of Highway 90-A, the development was named Venetian Estates and started a population boom with many more subdivisions to follow. By the mid 1950 s the Southwest Freeway was approaching from Houston. In 1959 the city was officially granted it charter. By the mid 1960 s the city of Sugar Land had the foundation in place to become the vibrant modern day city that it is. Page 1

2 The Spanish Tejas In 1519, Alonso Alvarez de Pineda of Spain was the first to map the Texas coast. After this initial mapping the first main exploration was by Cabeza de Vaca in After only a few years more than ninety Spanish and French explorers had established over twenty five missions and forts in the Texas coastal area. In 1718 the Spanish built the fort of San Antonio de Bexar and by 1772 San Antonio was serving as the seat of the Spanish government. It was in February of 1822 when the first of Stephen F Austin s colonist arrived. The original colonist, called the Old Three Hundred, mistook the Brazos River for the Colorado River and set up a makeshift camp, which they named Fort on the Bend. This would be the origination of Fort Bend County Texas, located on a bend in the Brazos River. Stephen F Austin negotiated a revised colonization act with the newly independent Mexican government in Each family would be granted a league, which is 4,428 acres, for ranching and a labor, which is 177 acres, for farming. In exchange for the properties, each settler would pay a total of one hundred and ninety dollars a league. Most of the early colonist came from the country states with the intention of raising corn, cotton and cattle, as they had done prior to immigrating. Several formed small farmsteads along the rivers and streams and would ship their crops down the Brazos to markets in New Orleans. By the mid 1830 s nearly 30,000 Americans had settled various Texas colonies. Theses American settlers felt that protection from America s colonization laws would be extended to those in the Texas colonies. The Mexican government halted immigration in 1830 as a result of unrest between the Mexican government and the colonist failure to pay tariffs. This prompted John Adams and Andrew Jackson to send envoys to Mexico to try to purchase eastern Texas. In February 1836, after several small clashes between Mexican soldiers and colonist, Mexico s newly elected president Santa Anna, assembled 7,000 men to march on San Antonio where many Texas rebels such as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were holding up at the Alamo. On March 2, 1836 Texas issued its Declaration of Independence and named General Sam Houston as their leader. On March 6, the Alamo fell. This prompted many colonists to flee eastward it what was known as the Runaway Scrape. On April 21, 1836 Sam Houston s Army captured Santa Anna and Texas won its independence from Mexico. During the 1840 s the quality of life for most Fort Bend County residence gradually improved. Most of the original dogtrot cabins were replaced or torn down. Elegant new homes decked with lumber and brick begun appearing in the center of many of Austin s Colony original grants. These large estates were becoming familiarly known as plantations. Page 2

3 Most of these plantation estates expanded to include large numbers of buildings such as barns, smoke houses, stables, potting sheds, tack sheds, slave cabins, privies, kitchens and granaries. On December 29, 1845 Texas entered the United States as the twenty-eighth state. In the late 1860 s a considerable number of individuals had acquired large segments of land and personal wealth. As the population grew in what is now Fort Bend County, these farming areas became consolidated into large plantations which grew cotton and sugarcane. As the population further increased Fort Bend, Matagorda, and Wharton counties became known as the Sugar Bowl of Texas. These large plantations will eventually become combined to form the Imperial Sugar Factory and eventually the town of Sugar Land Texas. The Birth of the Imperial Sugar Company The Imperial Sugar Company is the oldest existing business in the state of Texas. While officially consolidated as a private company in 1905, it has operated on the same site since It predates the founding of the City of Sugar Land, Fort Bend County and was in operation before Texas was admitted into the United States. The history of the company begins in the 1840 s when Samuel May Williams became the owner of the Oakland Plantation. Samuel May Williams served as secretary to Stephen F Austin and was provided a league of land on April 11, He found several different species of oak trees on the 4,428 acre parcel of land, which resulted in him naming it the Oakland Plantation. Williams was the first to plant sugar cane in 1840 and by 1843 the Oakland Plantation was successfully growing sugarcane. The Williams sugar crop and the surrounding area produced enough to justify the building of a commercial raw sugar mill on the property. In 1845 a crude horse powered sugar mill was constructed on a bend in Oyster Creek. The original building was nothing more than a simple shed housing large cast iron kettles and fire grates. The processed sugar was shipped down the Brazos River to the Galveston market. In 1853 W J Kyle and Benjamin Terry bought the S M Williams Plantation and named the property Sugar Land. Terry and Kyle would oversee the construction of the thirty-five mile Buffalo Bayou Brazos and Colorado railway from Harrisburg to Richmond, which was the first railway built in Texas. The railroad was originally to run from Stafford to Richmond but Terry and Kyle lured it to run though Sugar Land by giving land for the right away, creating a bend in the line which still exist today. The railroad put Sugar Land on the map for the first time and allowed for the exporting of the raw sugar mill and other products of the plantation. Kyle and Terry also invested in upgrading the existing mills with new technologies. By this time in 1855 there were more than thirty five mills grinding cane from Page 3

4 plantations in the present Fort Bend County area. Benjamin Terry would join the Confederacy in the Civil War and would form Terry s Texas Rangers. Terry died defending the confederacy in W J Kyle would die shortly after on his plantation in The plantation would struggle to survive but eventually the heirs of both families began to sell off portions of the plantation to Colonel Cunningham in After the civil war, Colonel E H Cunningham purchased the Kyle and Terry plantation in addition to three more plantation properties in the area. The plantations of Thatcher, Brebard, Borden, where combined with the Kyle and Terry plantation and formed the 12,500 acre Cunningham Plantation. In 1890 Cunningham invested about one million dollars to build a paper mill, new buildings, homes for his workers, as well as add new machinery to the sugar refinery, which he hoped would become the finest in the southern states. He installed a large pumping station on the Brazos River to pump water into Oyster Creek, which served as a means of adequate cooling water for the sugar mill year round. In 1879 Cunningham leased convicts for five years from the State of Texas to help cultivate the local sugar cane crops. He entered in a partnership with Littleberry Ambrose Ellis, owner of the nearby a sugar mill, to start convict farming. In addition to the convict labor, they would also extend the partnership to join their properties. Since the Cunningham property could not process all of the sugar available, they built a new 600 ton raw sugar mill in 1883 on the Ellis property and named the mill the Imperial mill. This would prove successful at first, but the contract would be dissolved with Ellis retaining the new mill and Cunningham his original 12,500 including the town of Sugar Land. Convict labor was stopped for sugar refining in 1914 and parts of the Ellis Plantation property were sold to state of Texas, which is still operated as a prison farm today. The availability of the Ellis and Cunningham mills caused many local farmers to increase their crops and send the cane to the area. Cunningham was determined to be the largest and most modern sugar refinery in the state and started to invest heavily in creating the most modern mill in the south. In 1896 Cunningham constructed a cane sugar refinery in Sugar Land which was to manufacture pounds of sugar a day. The refinery was built next to the Cunningham Raw Sugar Mill, some fifty yards north of the Galveston Harrisburg and San Antonio railroad tracks. This location put it squarely on top of the foundations of parts of the old Williams raw sugar mill built in In 1899 Cunningham would complete a new boiling house which stood three stories high and was a 100 ft wide by 150 ft long. However, it was destroyed by fire December 30, 1899 and shortly after the 1900 Galveston Hurricane would damage the refinery site again. Despite all of this, the site was up and running in 1901, producing Cunningham refined Sugar. Cunningham also Page 4

5 started to import raw sugar from Cuba in 1902 as local farmers were turning to other crops. However, Cunningham used credit to finance most of these additions and renovations. In 1904 Sugar Land has a population of seven hundred. Four hundred of these were convicts living in barracks around the south of town while the remaining three hundred people were mostly transients and worked on other Cunningham activities in and around town. There was virtually no transportation in and out of town, so workers had to live in the area. Some lived in tents, others in jerry-shacks, while others slept in various company buildings. The town contained four main buildings; the sugar plant, three small hotels, a saloon, and a commissary. The Sugar Land area had become known as The Hell Hole on the Brazos. With the properties and work force in these conditions, there seemed to be little hope for the turnaround which Cunningham had hoped for and investors seized the plantation in There was an attempt to keep the refinery operational but by 1906 a new investor and financier was being sought. In 1906 the Cunningham Plantation and 5,300 adjoining acres of the Ellis Plantation were purchased by I H Kempner of Galveston and W T Eldridge of Eagle Lake. They changed the plantations name to the Imperial Sugar Company and the development of Sugar Land begun. The name imperial arose from the fact that Ellis raw sugar mill had been known as the Imperial Sugar Mill. Mr. Kempner liked the imperial name because it reminded him of the Imperial Hotel in New York and he thought it would associate the company with quality and excellence. At this time they were operating two raw sugar mills, the Imperial mill on the Ellis Plantation and the Cunningham raw sugar mill in Sugar Land. They also were in control of the Cunningham refinery in Sugar Land. These mills processed sugar cane grown in a fifteen mile radius from the area around the mills. Both mills ran day and night from the beginning of the harvest in October to the end of December. This left the Cunningham refinery idle for about 200 days a year. Kempner and Eldridge had a vision to transform the Hell on the Brazos to a large and well run sugar refinery which operated year round, with a steady and reliable labor force, and diversified and productive farm crops grown on property drained and protected. In late 1908 they put together a list of long range goals which would shape the way in which the town developed: 1. Provide working and living conditions of a quality to attract young, stable families who would become capable and permanent employees. 2. Renovate the refinery so that it could operate year round, utilizing foreign grown sugar. Page 5

6 3. Drain and level the farm and grazing lands and provide a system of levees to protect lands against flooding, enable irrigation of crops, and provide lakes for storage of water near the refinery. 4. Attract sufficient farming and industrial activities to Sugar Land to further diversify the income of the community. The Company Town To attract dependable, family type workers, Kempner and Eldridge set first priority to the financing and constructing of the town and its facilities in order to bring in and keep a work force of permanent employees. Eldridge had experience managing company towns and quickly compiled the resources needed to revive the towns infrastructure. The company town primarily attracted a stable population of Germans and Czechs from central Texas. In 1908 the company opened the Imperial State Bank, added a paper mill, feed mill, a cotton gin and various retail stores. The town filled as fast as new houses could be built. The first major expansion of company housing were to the east side of Oyster Creek, across the river from the refinery. The company houses were maintained by company employees. The occupants of the homes were encouraged the plant trees, shrubs, and flowers to beautify their properties. As the town grew, new stores and services would open up, all governed and owned by the Imperial Mercantile Company. Although the first priority of the partnership was the homes, stores, and town site, Eldridge and Kempner proceeded to improve the farm lands and the refinery as soon as the labor became available. The most obvious problem was the flooding of the Brazos River, which in 1913 came all the way to Sugar Land. Kempner and Eldridge set about a plan of building levees and damns as well as leveling the land along Oyster Creek and also created new lakes to hold water for both the refinery and irrigation. Work started in 1913 and was finished by By 1917 there were 400 houses completed and a population of 1,200 including tenant farmers and the town was as self-sufficient as it could be. While the town infrastructure was being successfully constructed, Kempner and Eldridge set about updating the mills and refinery. Unfortunately, under Cunningham, the cleaning and maintenance work which should have been done after the mills and the refinery were finished processing the crops had been inadequate for years. The buildings were on solid concrete foundations and the heavy timber construction was in good condition, as well as the outside of the corrugated iron buildings, but the equipment and machinery were badly run down. In 1908 Eldridge hired a number of experienced and capable sugar technologies, mechanics, managers, and foremen, mostly from the Louisiana mills and refiners. While the early group brought to Sugar Land had been German, these technicians were most French. Page 6

7 By 1910 they were able to operate the refinery ten and a half months. In 1907 the capacity of the town had been 500,000 pounds per day. By 1910 they had increased this to 750,000 pounds, with most of the sugar cane coming from Cuba. In 1911, the refinery, which was still under the Cunningham name, was leased to the Imperial Sugar Company for a period of ten years. The brand name was changed to Imperial, and the logo contained the royal crown, similar to the one which Mr. Kempner had seen on the stationary of the Imperial Hotel in New York. During the grinding season of 1914, the Imperial raw sugar mill on the old Ellis Plantation burned to the ground and was never replaced. Since about 1910, with the impending removal of cheap convict labor and the infestation of sugar crops, the production of raw sugar in the United States started to quickly decline. For years the federal government had repeatedly placed and repealed tariffs on imported raw sugar, which started to force United States growers to compete with cheaper off-shore sugar growers. Other crops, particularly cotton, were beginning to be more attractive to local growers. Although the in 1915 the Cunningham refinery had increased to 850,000 pounds a day, it was easily able to obtain off-shore sugar shipments and the refinery was able to run year round. In 1928, the last locally grown sugar cane was processed at Sugar Land and all the raw sugar mills in the area were closed including the Imperial mill. The Imperial sugar refinery, now the only sugar manufacturing entity left in Texas, was operating entirely on raw sugar imported through Galveston. In the early 1920 s, the Imperial Sugar Company was reorganized to try to capture a market in the central part of the country. With a capacity of a million pounds of refined sugar a day and the growing population of Texas, the Imperial Sugar Company was able to take most of the business in Texas and Oklahoma. However, in the early 1920s a group of eastern investors planned to open a competing refinery in Texas City, just sixty miles south of Sugar Land. The Imperial Sugar Company responded in 1924 with a plan to increase the refineries capacity by fifty percent, from one million to one and a half million pounds per day. This would necessitate the enlargement of almost every station in the plant, as well as the construction of three new buildings. The largest new building planned was to be the bone char filter house, an eight story brick buildings. The plan to increase refining capacity also required a large, fireproof, brick warehouse for storing refined sugar, and a new five story building for additional boiling pans. These improvements would cost an estimated 1.5 million dollars and be implemented over three years. By the end of 1924, the company had completed the 75,000 square foot refined sugar warehouse. The warehouse could hold up to seven days of output, which allowed for great flexibility in both production and marketing. In 1926 the company Page 7

8 completed work on the new char house, which is a large filtration plant that removes colors and impurities from raw sugar. The new char house replaced an older and less efficient unit built by Cunningham in The new building was an eight story steel and brick construction containing thirty-two vertical cylindrical cast iron tanks, each larger than a railroad tank car. These cylinders are filled burned, ground, and screened animal bones, called bone char. The sugar liquid is then introduced through the filters until it runs clear, then it is sent to the pan house. The lower floors contained furnaces to revitalize the bone char. This process would provide a much higher quality of refined sugar and reduce cost, as well as increase the refineries production level by fifty percent. The char house would be the largest building built in Fort Bend County for the next fifty years and is a landmark which can be seen from miles away. It was in continuous operation, competing with modern refineries, until the refineries closer in The char house ran with a throughput of four million pounds a day. It cost around a million dollars in 1926 and represented the faith and determination which Kempner and Eldridge had in the future of the company. In 1925 the Texas Sugar Refinery opened in Texas City. The refinery was plagued by problems and only had a capacity of 1,300,000 of bone char, compared with the planned 1,500,000 pounds of the Imperial Sugar Refinery. The Texas Sugar Refinery was able to load the raw sugar directly into the factory, which gave it cost advantage over Imperial. However, the factory was not well designed and had a terrible problem with its fresh water supply. The factory was closed several times to try to reorganize, but was out of business by In the 1930 s an important change in the packaging and marketing of refined sugar took place. Historically, refined sugar was packaged at the refinery in barrels, and then transferred to one hundred pound cotton bags for shipment in carloads to wholesalers. The wholesalers then delivered the bags to retail grocers. The retail grocer then dumped the sugar into a large barrel and measured out the amount the consumer wished to buy. As retail stores became larger, this method proved impractical. In 1926, Imperial responded and begins packing sugar at the refinery in two, five, ten, twenty-five, fifty and one hundred pound cotton bags. Each of these bags had the Imperial logo and for the first time brand selling of sugar to the consumer occurred. In 1927, Imperial completed the major parts of its expansion plan with the construction of an additional pan house for boiling sugar syrups. This was a five story steel and concrete structure and cost $250,000. In addition to the increased output of 1,500,000 pounds per day, it was an important contributor to the program of cost reduction. Also a two lane paved road replaced the old gravel, crushed shell and mud roads between Sugar Land, Page 8

9 Houston, and Richmond. This diminished the isolation of Sugar Land and many businesses which had been necessary in a self-sufficient community were no longer needed and many began to leave in the early 1930 s. During the depression years the Imperial Sugar Company suffered several setbacks. A venture to convert the old Sealy Mattress Company plant into a fig-processing facility failed and cost the company two million dollars, which almost put the company out of business. In 1932 the problems being created by the depression were beginning to show and sugar consumption was declining. The company was unable to secure credit for raw sugar purchases to avoid shut downs at the plant. There were many three day work weeks and occasionally the refinery would sit idle for as long as two weeks. However, with all of these difficult times, the Kempner family was determined to keep the Imperial Sugar Company operating at a level which would keep the town functioning. During these difficult years, there was an attempt to create more jobs by brining in outside business. In 1930 the company made land available for a building to house Visco Products Company. A local chemist in the Imperial Sugar laboratory had, along with two other chemists, patented a process to use sodium aluminate in the manufacturing of oil well drilling mud and proposed to set up a manufacturing plant in Sugar Land. The company was acquired by Nalco Corporation in 1956 and today employs 460 people on forty acres next to the Sugar Refinery. In 1936 the company persuaded the Marshall Canning Company of Marshalltown, Iowa, to move one of its food processing plants to Sugar Land. This plant processed fruits, meats, and vegetables, and was attracted by the opportunity of contracting with locally grown produce, the availability of the Texas Fig Plant facilities, formally the Sealy Mattress Company, and access by rail to and truck to the southwest market. The 1930 s had seen a marked increase of the influence of the United States government on the sugar industry, with the passage of the Jones Constigan Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act in This would be the beginning of legislation and controls from Washington which would impact the United States sugar industry until the present. Planned to protect the income of domestic beet and cane growers, ensuing legislation using such tactics as tariffs, acreage controls, and price flooring would complicate the operation of cane sugar refineries and eventually lead to the closing of several in the 1980 s. When World War II started in September 1939, a massive increase in speculation occurred in the sugar market due to the war. As the was intensified and spread into the pacific in 1941, the beet sugar fields in Europe were being destroyed as well as the cane Page 9

10 sugar fields in the pacific and German submarines were beginning to threaten ocean traffic in the Atlantic. In early 1942, the marketing and importing quotas of raw sugar cane under the Sugar Act were suspended. For the first time the rationing of sugar on the national level occurred and was run by the Office of Price Administration and Department of Agriculture and would impact every person in the United States from the wholesaler to retailer, industrial user, hotel, restraint, and any institution using or dealing with sugar. One wartime regulation which particularly impacted the zoning restrictions placed on sugar refineries in the United States, which resulted from the wartime shortage of rail cars. The government considered closing all but the major sugar refineries in the country, with the Imperial Refinery to be closed. However, a new plan of zoning regulations divided the country into larger zones, with Imperial being the exclusive supplier to Texas. This result was that for five years, from 1942 to 1947, Imperial sugar was the only sugar on the shelves of every grocery store in Texas and Oklahoma and would have far reaching effects on Imperial s post-war marketing and success. The year 1942 also marked another significant change in the way sugar was packaged, as the industry changed from cotton bags to paper. Although more subject to more breaking during handling and shipping, paper bags lent themselves to high-speed mechanical filling and sealing and solved many of the problems during wartime shortage of labor. Paper was less expensive and cotton was in high demand because of the war, so the transition was fairly rapid. The short work weeks of the 1930 s were replaced by twelve to sixteen hour days and the sugar refinery would run for six consecutive weeks, seven days a week, until a maintenance shutdown was required. Even while being rationed, America would need to become the sugar bowl for many allied countries. The eleven million men and women it the armed forces consumed more sugar than they had as civilians and civilians back home consumed their entire ration of sugar, even if it was more than they usually consumed. It was fortunate that an adequate supply of raw sugar existed in Cuba as well as enough vessels in the Caribbean to deliver it to the United States. Maintenance of the refinery buildings and equipment became a very serious problem during the war. Running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for as much at six weeks, maintenance took place usually only in emergency situations. Machinery and parts, copper and steel, rubber and leather, even concrete and lumber could only be priority issued by the government and as a result many sugar refineries were badly in need of rebuilding in the late 1940 s. When the war was over, many veterans returned to Sugar Page 10

11 Land and life began to return to its prewar state. In 1945 Kempner became the sole owner of the Imperial Sugar Company. The City of Sugar Land Physically, the old company town had remained unchanged since 1925 and the population was just over 2,000. However, prior to the end of the war, there had been plans to completely overhaul the refining properties and the plans for new materials had been filed before the closing of the war so that the most critical requirements could be delivered as quickly as possible. The rebuilding was complicated b the fact that a train load of raw sugar arrived at the refinery daily from Galveston and 2.5 million pounds of refined sugar was being shipped to customers daily. The modernization of the facility had to be done in such as way as not to interrupt the refinery, which was running sixteen hours days from five to seven days a week. This would require that some of the processes would have to be rerouted around new constructions and then incorporated into the new buildings. This program of bypassing, tearing down, and rebuilding continued for six years. The regulatory zoning was lifted in 1947 and completion returned into Texas. However, with the current advertising campaign and the sole distributing of Imperial Sugar during the war, the company was able to maintain 90% of the market. In 1950 Sugar Land was still a sleepy little company town, centering on the Imperial Sugar refinery which dominated the flat coastal landscape. In 1950 sugar sales exceeded five million hundredweight for the first time and the refineries capacity had been increased to 2.8 million pounds per day. The plant was operating sixteen hour per day on eight two hour shifts and employed 420 people, almost all living in Sugar Land. Imperial s sales had increased past the capacity of the refinery and overtime operations was costly. The solution was to run the refinery on three eight hour shifts daily. However, this would necessitate the hiring of an additional one hundred workers to work the additional third shift. The program of modernizing the refinery on such a scale made it impractical for the addition of company homes. Herbert Kempner s solution was, for the first time, to make available property in the town for employees to build homes. Sites were offered to employees who could start immediately on the construction of their new homes. Prices for the sties were low, from $500 to $2,500 per lot, with added incentives that twenty-five percent of the cost of the lot would be refunded to all employees who could move out of their company houses in their new homes by December 31, This sparked a massive housing boom and by the end of the year the company was able to offer the vacated houses to enough new employees to Page 11

12 work the third shift. Imperial had no trouble finding new workers because the rental rates of these homes were low and they were maintained in excellent shape. In 1950, attention was turned to modernizing the office and retails spaces the company owned. The general store and various other retail establishments had been located on the north side of Highway 90-A in two and three story corrugated iron buildings. In December 1952 a new modern office and shopping center was built on the south side the highway. Of the five hundred company homes owned at the time, two hundred were substandard dwellings, mostly located on the north side of the factory grounds called the quarters. The old one bedroom houses were torn down and new modern two and three bedroom houses were built. These houses were then offered to employees at attractive rates. Next, Sugar Land Industries dredged out a system of lakes and waterways and sold three hundred waterfront properties. Located just south of Highway 90-A, the development was named Venetian Estates. The company also opened a thousand acres industrial office park and light commercial area. By the mid 1950 s the Southwest Freeway was approaching from Houston. Houston was one of the countries fastest growing cities and the city limits were pushing closer and closer to Sugar Land. By then it was becoming completely impractical for the companies to extend the type of subsidized city services to employees as well as citizens who had no connection with the company. There was an expanding need for more police and fire protection as well as other services such as garbage collection. In 1958 the Imperial Sugar Companies and Sugar Land Industries joined a petitioning the state for a city charter. The companies then began to ready the city to be turned over to the public. In 1959 the city was officially granted it charter. Transition from a company town to a city charter posed a number of problems, but the Imperial Sugar Company and Sugar Land Industries with the Mayor and City Council closely to make the transition as smooth as possible. The newly incorporated city of Sugar Land had no money and the Imperial Sugar Company advanced funds until the first tax revenue was collected. All of the cities and roads the company owned were dedicated to the city and revenue bonds were issued to buy the companies water and sewer system. The city gradually took control of other company services, such as garbage collection and fire and police protection. By the mid 1960 s the city of Sugar Land had the foundation in place to become the vibrant modern day city that it is. Page 12

13 Works Cited Armstrong, R.M. Sugar Land Texas and the Imperial Sugar Company. Houston: D. Armstrong Co, Aykroyd, W R. The Story of Sugar. Chicago: Quadragle Books, Strong, L A G. The Story of Sugar. London: Chiswick Press, Hill, Roger W. Holly Sugar Corporation: The First 90 Years. New York: The Newcomen Society of the United States, Hook, Andrew Van. Sugar: Its Production, Technology, and Uses. New York: The Ronald Press Company, Rolph, George M. Something About Sugar: Its History, Growth, Manufacture. San Francisco: Taylor, Smeallie-Smith. New Construction for Older Buildings: A Design Sourcebook for Architects. New York: Wiley & Sons, Wallingford, Sharon. Fort Bend County Texas: A Pictorial History. Sugar Land: Fort Bend Publishing Group, Page 13