Edward Mandell House

The Colonel was an honorary title: Governor James S. Hogg put House on his military staff as a lieutenant colonel in 1893, a post with no military duties. House ran the family business, sold the cotton plantations, went into banking and helped found the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway. He managed Wilson's campaign from July 1911 and served without office as an executive agent until the Paris conference, after which Wilson broke with him. As a young man House and his companions harassed freed slaves with taunts and slingshots, and his diary reveals a deeply felt racism.

What the plaque says

Edward Mandell House (July 26, 1858 - March 28, 1938) Son of Houston businessman and Mayor Thomas W. House, was born in a two-story frame house at this site. He attended the Houston Academy and later continued his education in Virginia and at Cornell University. E. M. House married Loulie Hunter in 1881, and they were the parents of two daughters. In 1885 the family moved to Austin, and House became involved in Democratic party politics. He was instrumental in the election of four Texas governors-- James S. Hogg, Charles A. Culberson, S. W. T. Lanham, and Joseph D. Sayers. House gained national political prominence in 1912 when he was instrumental in the nomination of Woodrow Wilson for president. House became a trusted advisor to President Wilson, participating in foreign policy negotiations during and after World War I. He played a major part in drafting the Fourteen Points, Wilson's plan for ending the war, and was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. House died in New York in 1838 and was buried in Houston's Glenwood Cemetery. Known as Colonel House for many years, he is remembered as one of the most politically influential people of Texas and the United States, although he never held elective office. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.3 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 1.7 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.8 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.4 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Thomas William House — steps away
• Democratic National Convention, 1928 — steps away
• Houston City, Republic of Texas — steps away
• Sons of the Republic of Texas — 0.3 mi