‘It’s National Geographic’: The vision behind Abilene Heritage Square

A forgotten building has been reintroduced as what may become one of Abilene’s most unforgettable landmarks.

 

By Greg Jaklewicz/West Texas Tribune

The doors are open again to the three-story Abilene High School, which opened to students in 1924. More than 100 years later, it’s Abilene Heritage Square, the home to the city’s new central library, a science center and much more.

With a snip of a ribbon and chants of “Hoot, hoot, hooray,” the 140,000-square-foot complex on South First and Grape streets began its new life on May 16, 2026.
“This is a really pivotal moment in our community,” said Laura Moore, executive director of The Grace Museum. “This is absolutely a community living room.”

Total cost of the project tops $86 million ($70-plus million in construction alone), all privately raised. The city of Abilene’s only expense in getting a new library was buying its furniture.

The driving force behind this project that took 15 years to achieve ultimately were the people of Abilene. However, no shortage of credit goes to the Dian Graves Owen Foundation, which provided an undisclosed bulk of the funding. The foundation, which primarily funds the arts, education, health, and human services, tabs this effort as its legacy project.

This is the biggest project in its 30-year history.

Dian Graves Stai, the co-founder of Owen Healthcare Inc. and founder of the foundation, wore both a sunny hat and a smile to the grand opening.

“I say Hoot, hoot, hooray!” she said moments after artist KT Taylor’s owl sculpture titled “Inspiration Takes Flight” was unveiled at the “old” front of the building. The new library entrance is on the west side.

“Blessings on this community and all of the citizens who made this happen,” Stai said. “This is so exciting, and it is just beginning. Someone did it before I got here, and now it’s my turn to pass it on.”

A legacy gift

Heritage Square is the first foundation effort to bear the philanthropist’s name; the newly refurbished auditorium is named Owen Hall in her honor.

“I have worked for Dian for 24 years, and she has never agreed to allow her name to be on anything,” foundation grants administrator Jane Beard said. “And she wouldn’t agree to this, either. I kinda begged because I really felt it should.”

Beard also is board president of the nonprofit organization that owns the site. “People always want to name something after Dia,  and her standard comment is, ‘How much can I give them to not name it after me?’

“I said to her, ‘If you are ever to allow your name to be on anything, this is it. Please let us do this.’”

The foundation wasn’t alone. A total of almost 600 donors includes 22 foundations and residents of dozens of Texas cities and  23 states. Many donors are  former AHS students and staff, with money coming even from leftover class reunion funds.

Beard said naming opportunities still exist, and an endowment will provide for  future investment and upkeep of Heritage Square.

This isn’t just an Abilene thing.

She said her research turned up surprising numbers. More than 30,000 students from 62 counties come to Abilene yearly for educational visits.

With the opening of a science center known as Spark, that total could rise.

“Having this science center here is going to be a big resource. They are going to have stuff that will switch out,” Beard said of keeping things fresh.

This was personal

If the foundation was the vehicle to accomplishment, its driver has been Beard. The Abilene Christian College graduate in social studies was instrumental in creating a new purpose for a deteriorating building.

Beard had the right stuff. The Wichita, Kansas, native began her career as an attorney when women still faced gender challenges. Abilene, however, was hiring, and she made her home here in 1977. She married Rusty Beard, also in law, and Abilene became home to their two boys.

Her stick-to-itiveness was put to use again in the Heritage Square project.

The downtown library, a voter-approved $700,000 bond project, opened Jan. 18, 1960, and was built to last 20 years. A historical footnote: it was designed by local architect David S. Castle, who also designed the now 103-year-old former school building.

“The library opened during the Eisenhower administration,” Beard said for emphasis. The nation has had 12 presidents since then.

When Beard returned to Abilene from Austin, where she obtained her law degree at the University of Texas, the library was already 17 years old.

It was used for almost another 50 years.

“We’ve gotten our money’s worth,” Beard said.

“I have pictures of the boys getting their first library cards,” she  continued. As Sterling, the eldest, and Hudson grew up – they attended Lincoln Middle School – she witnessed the library age.

“I was in it all the time,” she said. “That was one of the things we did. We went to the library, to story time. So I was pretty aware of what we had at the time, and that we deserved better.”

A passionate supporter of public libraries, she eventually helped lock into a vision and make it a reality.

Her personal driving force was family. Her grandparents had third-grade educations, and her father was born in a tent in Ranger during its oil boom more than 100 years ago. Working the oilfields as an adult, he did not have access to public libraries, nor did he keep books because of frequent moves.

Near one camp, he was given National Geographic magazines to read by a woman down the road.

He told his daughter once, “What that told me is that there is a bigger world  than I could see, and all I had to figure out was how to get there.”

That comment stuck with her.

“We’ve got a lot of kids like that in this part of the state whose field of vision is limited,” Beard said.

The library is like new glasses for them.

“They don’t realize what they can be,” she said. The new science center will show them the world out there, and what they could be, she said. Many successful Americans point back to the libraries as their refuge from a life of despair, she said.

“For me, it’s all about inspiring and equipping. A glimpse at what they can be,” Beard said, pausing. “It’s National Geographic.”

This is her story, too.

“I was one of those kids whose life was changed because there was a public library,” said Beard, who found her refuge at Boulevard Branch Library in Wichita. The librarian there showed her books about women, including Kansan Amelia Earhart, who overcame obstacles.

With her brother and first cousins, she was the first in their family history to go to college.

“I know personally the power of libraries,” Beard said. “I am anxious to see other people experience it.”

It took that proverbial village

Beard is quick to share the credit.

Local preservationist Bill Minter was her ally in the long effort to save the building. They met when she returned to Abilene, and they both served on committees for failed library bond issues in 1983 and 1992.

“I was really disappointed … a lot of people were,” she said of those outcomes.

Beard loved history in addition to libraries. Minter loved libraries in addition to history. They would become the dynamic duo of change.

Former Abilene Reporter-News editor Glenn Dromgoole, Beard said, offered the new name one night at a Grace gala.

“Abilene. Heritage. Square,” he told Beard.

“We are an education town,” she said. That’s our heritage – self-improvement through education. And it’s a square piece of property.

“And, oh by the way, it makes all the AHS things work in the building.”

At the opening, the names of many others from the city of Abilene, The Grace Museum and community at large were dropped.

But it was Beard’s dedication to the project that got it not only over the hump but over the many obstacles that followed, including a pandemic and the many funding challenges.

The hump was determining what to do with the building. The question became, Beard said, how could a restored former school serve the community?

Lincoln Middle School was closed in 2007, and a bond soon after that to turn it into a technology center failed two years later.

“Bill said to me, ‘You know, Jane, if something isn’t done, that building is going to deteriorate or somebody’s going to buy it and tear it down.’”

But what could it be?

“We went through 17 different ideas,” she said. Ideas ranged from housing to an IMAX theater. “One day, we were sitting on the front steps and Bill said, ‘I think we’re looking at this wrong. Instead of thinking about what this building could be, we need to think about what Abilene needs.’”

That was the spark for the foundation.

“The foundation’s attitude is ‘What needs to be done for Abilene?’” Beard said, noting Judy Matthews’ Dodge Jones Foundation “had the same attitude.”

This was the spark the project needed to ignite.

Can y’all come down here?

Abilene needed a new library, one designed to accommodate the needs of the 21st century.

The Grace, home to art, history and children’s areas, wanted to also focus on science.

Hiding in plain sight was an 8-acre school campus.

The first job was to stir up interest. It had been so long since there was a new library that residents couldn’t imagine what one could be, Beard said.

“It’s not just a warehouse for books,” she said.

Actually, the first job was to save the building by getting it on a register for national historic places. That would not save it from demolition, but it would slow that idea.

The Abilene ISD still owned the building but turned it over to the city because it was feared environmental issues (asbestos removal, for one) would be needed. There was federal money for that but the “owner can’t be the same one that put the pollutants in it.”

Ironically, asbestos wasn’t much of a problem. The building predates widespread usage.

When the idea of moving the library there surfaced, the research began.

The school was not built to support the load of thousands of books. Could they, as Beard thought, “hollow it out like a pumpkin” – build new inside and keep the exterior intact?

“It could be a library, but only on the first floor,” she said. “But what else could it be?”

They discovered the answer in Utah. In Provo, Brigham Young Academy, built in 1875, had been converted into a library.

“A landmark not unlike this one in a very prominent place,” she said. “We could see parallels.”

The director was invited to Abilene in April 2011 to talk to a group that now was loosely organized but bent on saving the old AHS.

“Our minutes go back to 2011,” Beard said. “We didn’t have a name or anything.”

City officials and potential donors attended the meeting.

The idea sparked.

“But what about the rest of it?” was the next question.

“For a while, we chased ‘What could we get money for?’” Beard said. A business incubator?

Again, Beard and Minter pointed to what does Abilene need? It wasn’t just about filling space.

Ah, but The Grace needed space.

“That was the missing piece,” she said. “A library and a museum are natural partners. It seemed that these eight acres were always intended to be an educational hub.”

The Grace and the city lease from Abilene Heritage Square Inc., which owns the buildings and property. They also staff their space. The city saved $20 million, Beard said, by not building a new library via a successful bond vote.

At last, an idea had momentum. What proponents didn’t know was that more years would pass before AHS lived again.

Many hurdles crossed

At last, an idea had momentum.

Fund-raising began and passersby saw site prep beginning as the calendar turned to 2020.

Early signage teased the public with a 2023 opening.

Then the snags set in.

COVID that year disrupted most projects in Abilene, at least for a time. That included the AHS effort.

Supply chain and tariff issues followed. And, of course, there would be on-site surprises, such as filling in a forgotten cistern that was under the former home-ec area of the school.

Another major obstacle was a failed effort to obtain Texas Historical Commission funding, worth, Beard said, about $10 million in tax credits. That’s because THC did not like the idea of building an addition on the west side to house the library.

“They wanted you to see the west wall of the auditorium when you drove down the street,” she said. “Building on the west side was the only way to make it work functionally.

“We lost a year, maybe two years. trying to get support from the Texas Historical Commission. They didn’t approve any plan they came up with.”

Beard laughed.

“It seemed like such an easy thing at the time,” she said, thinking back to 2011. “It turned out to be a much bigger project than any of us realized.”

Maureen Arndt of 720 Design has done 400 library projects, Beard said.

“She tells me this was the most complex because we’re building onto this 100-year-old structure,” Beard said.

But, Beard believes, the investment is worth every cent.

“This is something that will make generational improvements,” she said. “I toured someone who is not from Abilene, and he said after two hours, ‘This is going to change lives.’”

The project brings to mind the community support of Matthews’ foundation, which saved the now 96-year-old Paramount Theatre downtown.

Beard said the comparison is spot on.

“This is where Judy and Dian come from,” she said. “A legacy that makes a difference in the life of others.”