J. Vance Lewis

Before Van Court rose, this lot had a story of its own, told in a 2007 city landmark report. Isabelle Simms, a widowed domestic worker, bought it in 1874 by handing her savings to her pastor, Jack Yates, to make the purchase. In 1896 she conveyed part of it to her neighbor Pauline Gray, the future Mrs. Lewis. A mechanic's lien puts the 1907 cottage at $2,800; Simms's house came down and she moved next door. Pauline outlived Lewis by nearly four decades and died in 1963. In 2007 the Rutherford B. H. Yates Museum bought the house.

What the plaque says

J. Vance Lewis J. Vance Lewis was an attorney and community activist for the African-American community in Houston. Born enslaved circa 1863 in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, Lewis attended Leland University in New Orleans before earning a teaching certificate from the Normal School in Orange, Texas. Lewis taught and later served as principal at Cripple Creek School in Angelina County,Texas. In 1897, he graduated from the Chicago College of Law. In 1901, Lewis moved to Houston, residing in the Freedmen's Town community. He attended Antioch Baptist Church, where he married Pauline R. Gray, a school teacher and later librarian of Colored Carnegie Library. Lewis also opened a firm with attorney Lewis W. Greenly; at the time, J. Vance Lewis was one of only a handful of black lawyers in Texas. In 1904, he was admitted to the Texas Bar. Lewis built this home, which he named Van Court, in 1907. Three years later, he published his autobiography. By 1920, he moved his office here. While Lewis continued to practice law, he also supported economic enterprises in the community, contributing funds for the organization of an African-American bank and joining the Colored Commercial Club, which encouraged Houstonians to support black-owned businesses. Lewis was also involved in politics, running for Criminal District Judge in 1920 and traveling across the country in support of the Black and Tan Republican Party. He encouraged African Americans to educate themselves and work hard to achieve their goals. J. Vance Lewis died on April 24, 1925 and was buried in Olivewood Cemetery. He continues to be remembered as one of Texas' first black attorneys and as a voice for equality in Houston and throughout the nation. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.6 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.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.4 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 — 1.5 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.
• The Menil Collection — 1.6 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• The Reverend Ned P. Pullum — steps away
• New Zion Temple Church - Worldwide Fellowship, Inc. — steps away
• Gregory School — steps away
• William C. Swearingen — steps away