The Governor Ross Sterling Mansion

The plaque stops in 1961; the later owners tell the rest. The Sterlings' 1946 gift to the Houston Optimist Club carried a condition: the club had to buy another 200 acres of Sterling land for $250,000. The Optimists ran it as a boys' home, known in the 1960s as Boys Harbor, until, struggling with upkeep, they offered the title to supporters in 1961. The Paul Barkleys bought it and made it a home again, but neighbors blocked their yacht-club plan. It went to auction in 2016 listed at $6 million. It is a private residence, not open to visitors.

What the plaque says

The Governor Ross Sterling Mansion Architect Alfred C. Finn of Houston drew the plans for this scaled-down replica of the American White House for oil executive Ross S. Sterling (1875-1949). Completed in 1927 on the residential "Gold Coast" stretching from La Porte to Morgan's Point, it stood as a landmark on the Houston Ship Channel. By night its roof deck commanded a view of the lighted industrial plants in this region. Layers of stone, concrete, air space, and plastered lath form the thick exterior walls. Deeply sunken foundations and huge beams running the length of the structure give it hurricane resistance. With 21,000 square feet of floor space, this was known as the largest private residence in Texas at the time it was built. It has seven fireplaces, 15 baths, 34 rooms-- including a dining room seating 300 guests. Silver and gold inlaid sconces, fine cared woods, and Tiffany chandeliers form some of the adornments. There were elaborate facilities for recreation and for efficient housekeeping. Sterling and his wife Maude Abbie (Gage) had several children. Ross Sterling was governor of Texas 1931-1933. In 1946 he donated his mansion to a civic club and it was used as a juvenile home until 1961. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 7.5 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Space Center Houston — 10 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 23 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 — 23 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.

More markers nearby

• Bay Ridge / Morgan's Point — steps away
• Gribble-Hofheinz House — 0.3 mi
• Morgan's Point Cemetery — 0.7 mi
• New Washington — 0.7 mi