The Curtis Mansion

The Clio entry names Charles W. Bulger, a Galveston architect, as the designer in 1902 and says the house matches one built for Isaac Heffron in Galveston. Queen Anne features mix with the Shingle style then fashionable in the East. When the cotton market collapsed, William Miller went bankrupt, and in 1914 A. Lon Curtis and his wife Cora took the property for about $8,000 in back taxes. Odd details include an umbrella drain in the entrance hall, an Old Maid's Gallery upstairs and a Tiffany-type stair window. It is on the National Register as the Miller-Curtis House.

What the plaque says

The Curtis Mansion Cotton broker William Ray Miller (1868-1954) and his wife Ida (Rogers) built this structure in 1902 and lived here with their large family about six years. Mrs. Miller was from Galveston, and had graduated from Baylor College (now Mary Hardin-Baylor). Born in Kentucky, Miller grew up in Belton, the son of a merchant. Noting the costliness of this house, some observers have called it "A Monument to King Cotton." A. Lon and Cora (Lee) Curtis acquired the property in 1914. It became known as the Curtis Mansion because they and their descendants occupied it for the next 59 years. Lon Curtis (1872-1934) graduated from the University of Texas, took a second degree at the University of Michigan, and began practicing law in Temple, moving to Belton when he became County Attorney. He and his wife had one son, Lee. As new owners, the Curtises brought a decorator from Kansas City to modify the house to their tastes. Noted for its hospitality as well as its architecture, it remained a show place of the city. In 1973, Lee Curtis sold the mansion. It now is a complex of luxury suites, preserved as a relic of the cotton empire that once dominated the Brazos Valley. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 7.1 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Mother Neff State Park — 19 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Jeff Hamilton — 0.2 mi
• Scott and White School of Nursing — 0.2 mi
• A Memorial to Civil War Education in Texas — 0.2 mi
• Belton Woman's Commonwealth — 0.4 mi