Early Texas A&M Campus Housing

The plaque counts the houses; a 2017 City of College Station brochure names some of the people who lived in them. Coach Homer Norton, whose team won the 1939 national championship, lived in a 1923 bungalow that newlyweds Manning Smith moved off campus in 1941 and lived in for 67 years. Francis Bolton, later A&M's president from 1948 to 1950, lived in a house built in 1905. Charles Puryear, acting president in 1914, built his own in 1911. Sales of the houses ran from 1941 until 1972.

What the plaque says

Early Texas A&M Campus Housing When Texas A&M University opened in 1876, it was four miles from Bryan, the nearest town, and the need for campus housing for faculty and staff arose. The first of the campus houses, five brick homes along the east side of Throckmorton Street, were built in 1876. By 1938, there were more than one hundred homes on campus. The types of houses varied, ranging from large Queen Anne style homes to small bungalows and cottages. The homes were located throughout the campus. When the City of College Station was incorporated in 1938, housing in town became available, and the decision was made to remove the faculty housing. Many residents expressed a desire to buy their homes, and the college began accepting bids in 1941. One third of the houses were soon sold, with prices ranging from $200-$800. Another third were sold and moved over the next twenty years. The rest of the original structures were burned or razed. None remain on campus. Forty-one of the original homes have been located. Thirty-eight are in College Station, two are in Bryan, and one is about two miles north of Bryan. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 1.4 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 20 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 21 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Texas A&M Corps of Cadets — steps away
• Early Play-By-Play Radio Broadcast of a College Football Game — steps away
• Main Drill Field, Texas A&M University — 0.3 mi
• Texas AMC and WWI — 0.3 mi