M. D. Anderson

Anderson was born in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1873, the sixth of eight children; his father was the first president of the First National Bank of Jackson, and Anderson himself was a banker there as a young man. He moved to Houston for its nearness to the port of Galveston and its stronger banks, and he served as the firm's treasurer until illness forced him out in 1938. A member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and a Democrat, he was active in neither church nor politics. He died in Houston in August 1939 and was buried in Jackson.

What the plaque says

M. D. Anderson Tennessee native Monroe Dunaway (M. d.) Anderson (1873-1939) joined his brother Frank and William L. and Ben Clayton in an Oklahoma cotton merchandising business in 1904. Anderson served as chief financial officer for the business, known as Anderson, Clayton & Company. In 1907 he moved to Houston and opened a branch office for the company in Houston's original Cotton Exchange building at the corner of Travis and Franklin streets. Anderson, Clayton & Company moved its main offices to Houston in 1916 and in 1923 moved here to the Houston Cotton Exchange building. They prospered and became the leading merchants in the global cotton market. Anderson never married and lived frugally in downtown hotels. In 1936 he established a charitable foundation with the fortune he made in the cotton business. Upon his death in 1939, $20 million of his estate was willed to the M. D. Anderson Foundation. The Texas Legislature authorized the creation of a cancer research hospital in 1941. Upon learning this, trustees of the M. D. Anderson Foundation successfully bid for the institution and helped finance it. The M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Texas Medical Center which the M. D. Anderson Foundation created have become world renowned institutions. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.8 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 — 1.6 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 — 1.9 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 — 2.7 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

• Christ Church Cathedral — steps away
• Site of Old Houston Academy — steps away
• Harris County — steps away
• Daughters of the Republic of Texas — steps away