In 1922, the Red River Lumber Company announced that Westwood was to become a permanent town. Additional investments in community buildings commenced, such as a American Legion Hall and Masonic Hall. Across the log pond was Old Town home to large immigrant population. The residents of Old Town felt left out with no hall of their own. They, too, had their own fraternal organization the Centro Hispano Americano Society and desired to have a place to hold their functions.
In 1926, the residents of Greenville built a modest community hall for $2,100. This inspired the Old Town to do the same. They contacted Fletcher Walker, Red River’s resident manager, with a proposal to build a hall similar to Greenville’s and offered to pay half the costs. Fletcher took the matter of under consideration and on August 20 wrote to His brother, Willis Walker, part of the local management, about the topic: “The Mexicans and wops want a recreation hall similar to the one recently built in Greenville. The Old Town bunch are willing to dig up $1,300 which will cover the labor cost, and they have $1,000 of it in the Bank, if you are willing to build a building on this basis. “The way it stands they cannot take part in the recreations on this side of the Pond as the majority of them do not speak English. A Hall of this sort would make a place for their parties, dances, a Movie occasionally, and a general social center and they have a Fraternal Society organized so they feel competent to police, janitor and generally conduct the building so it will make a better place for them all to live, and as this common labor is quite essential to the Plant as they do work that the short staked Americans will not stay long enough as to become sufficient in it has a commercial value to us that it is hard to measure dollars and cents, but I believe is a good proposition to go ahead with.”
Willis was agreeable and wrote back, “If for amusement only and thus we could do this much to retain men and helps on labor turnover.” Archie Walker who constantly watched Red River’s bottom line wanted to know if they would receive any rent for the building, or were they just donating the use of it? What is rather remarkable while the Walkers quibbled about spending so little money to build this hall, they did not blink an eye when in the previous year they had spent over $100,000 to build and furnish the halls for the American Legion and Masons, as well as the Westwood Theater.
For the residents of Old Town, they were just pleased to learn that their request for a hall was approved. When completed they referred to their hall as the El Centro.