Denia Park

Eugenia Porter Rayzor. Denton Doings. March 1, 1964.

Eugenia Porter Rayzor (1900-1993) 

In October of 1964, J. Newton Rayzor gifted 49 acres to the City of Denton for the creation of Denia Park, named in honor of his wife Eugenia Porter Rayzor. In the latter half of the 1960s baseball fields were constructed at Denia Park to replace the fields that would be lost with the construction of the Civic Center Pool. In 1975 a bond election was approved for the construction of Denton’s first two recreation centers and in 1977 Denia Park and North Lakes Park were selected as the sites. Denia was a nickname that derived from her little sister's inability to pronounce Eugenia and continued to be something her husband called her.

Eugenia Porter Rayzor was born in New Haven, CT to Minnie McLaughlin Porter and Dr. Milton Brockett Porter, who was head of the Mathematics Department at the University of Texas for a time. She graduated from the University of Texas and subsequently became a teacher at Ball High School in Galveston before marrying J. Newton Rayzor in 1923. The couple would have four children; son Jess Newton and daughters Evelyn, June and Jeanne.

Mrs. Rayzor was an active participant in a number of community endeavors, mostly in the Houston area. She was an organizing board member of the Day Care Association, Protestant Charities, Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes and Camp Fire Girls. She also served on the boards for the Mental Health Association, Hester House, United Churchwomen, Texas Bill of Rights Foundation, Houston Council on World Affairs, Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) of which she was a Life Member and former President, United Nations Association, United Fund, Council on Human Relations and St. Stephens Episcopal Church. She was the recipient of the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Olivia Hogue Award from the Council on Education in Race Relations.

J. Newton Rayzor. Courtesy of the Woodson Research Center,

Fondren Library, Rice University.

James Newton Rayzor (1895-1970)

The Rayzor family is well established in Denton. J. Newton Rayzor’s father, J.N. Rayzor moved to the Mustang Community in Denton County in 1874 opening a grocery and ginning business before buying into the Alliance Milling Co. which would later become Morrison Milling Co. J. Newton Rayzor, the youngest of four sons, would graduate from Denton High School in 1913 before attending North Texas State Normal College (now University of North Texas) and ultimately graduating from Rice University before commissioning as an infantry officer during World War I.

After the war, Rayzor practiced law in Denton before losing a race for Denton County attorney to Ben Boyd in 1922. From then he moved to Galveston and then Houston. In 1941 he purchased a stake in a transportation company which would become the Commercial Petroleum and Transport Co., the largest, unregulated inland water carrier in the world at the time. He would sell his stake in 1955 for $15 million.

The contributions of the Rayzor family can be found all over Denton. The Rayzor Ranch area was previously owned by Newton Rayzor, where once stood the $100,000 home he'd had built upon a hill. A tidy sum for a home at the time. In 1954 Newton Rayzor remodeled the Southern Hotel to become Denton's first "new, ultra-modern hotel" which featured a reconstructed lobby, coffee shop and individual room air conditioners. Just six years later, however, the building would be given to Texas Woman's University to house graduate students and "mature undergraduates," and would be dubbed Rayzor Hall, Texas Woman's University, Graduate Student Center. The building still exists today as Pecan Place Senior Housing Apartments operated by the Denton Housing Authority on Sycamore and Locust.

Other gifts and contributions from the Rayzor family include: land for expansion and creation of schools including J. Newton Rayzor Elementary, Eugenia Porter Elementary and the Denton Preparatory School which was renamed to Selwyn School after daughter Jeanne Selwyn Rayzor; a 1913 frame house built by Charles I. Francis which was gifted to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church; and land and money for a planned Denton Arts Complex in 1982. Much of that plan did not come to fruition as it included a Visual Arts Center, now the Patterson-Appleton Arts Center, and the J.N. Rayzor Center for Performing Arts, which was to use the old power plant building across the street, but was never implemented. That building now houses Central Fire Station and the Denton Firefighters Museum.