Site of Guitar Mansion

The Guitars' surname turned up in stone. One local account describes six winged lions at the front corners, each holding a stone guitar, where another source remembers a single griffin. Five of the lions were reportedly buried on the grounds after the house came down in 1964. Inside, besides the bowling alley, were hand-painted wall coverings and a walk-in icebox said to hold 1,800 pounds of ice. Accounts disagree on whether the house went up in 1910 or 1912, and it stood vacant for years before demolition.

What the plaque says

Site of Guitar Mansion John and Laura Hudson Guitar of Missouri moved to Abilene in 1898. John was already a wealthy businessman who owned a number of cotton gins and cotton oil mills throughout Texas, most in towns served by the Texas & Pacific Railroad. He held large farming and ranching interests as well as lucrative Abilene real estate. Laura was a prominent member of Abilene's social and civic organizations and the First Christian Church. The Guitars bought property on this site in 1905 and hired an architectural firm from Kansas City, Missouri, to design their new home. Guitar employees erected a grand mission-style house with Spanish influences at a total cost of $75,000 in 1910. An arcade of concrete arches beneath an elaborate parapet adorned the front of the house. The five-bedroom mansion and carriage house faced the railroad, and the grounds encompassed half a city block. The edifice featured many highly decorative details such as crystal and stained glass windows and fine wood and marble interiors, innovative elements included security lights, intercoms, door bells, a heating system and a bowling alley with an early pin setter. The Guitars reared eight children in the house, a showplace of Abilene society and a significant addition to the city's architectural wealth. John died in 1936, and after Laura's death in 1948 the house remained vacant. Vandalism and deterioration prompted the couple's heirs to raze the house in 1964. Pieces of the structure, including a stone griffin holding a guitar, were placed in both museum and private collections in Abilene. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.6 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 12 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 14 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Abilene State Park — 17 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• Laughter Undertaking Company — steps away
• Site of Abilene's First School — 0.3 mi
• Abilene Reporter-News — 0.3 mi
• The Texas & Pacific Railway: First Railroad Across West Texas — 0.3 mi