Thomas William House, Jr.

The bank T. W. House, Jr. took over came to him through his father's will. Julia Beazley's Handbook entry says the will held the estate together for five years and kept the banking and mercantile business running in the elder House's name. An 1895 county history put the estate at about two and a half million dollars. S. O. Young's 1912 history says the son bought his brothers' interests in the bank, making it one of the state's great financial institutions until the panic of 1907 closed it.

What the plaque says

Thomas William House, Jr. (1846-1923) T. W. House, Jr., was the third of eight children born to Thomas William (1814-1880) and Mary Elizabeth (Shearn) (1822-1870) House. T.W. House, Sr., was an English immigrant who established the T.W. House Bank in 1838 and became mayor of Houston in 1862. The younger House received his education at the Houston Academy. At age 23 he married Ruth Nicholson (1847-1914); they had six children together, building a home at 1010 Louisiana in downtown Houston. House served on the Houston City Council from 1880 to 1886. Following his father's death, he became the director and then sole proprietor of the T. W. House Bank. In addition to managing the family business holdings, he was involved in the operation of three Houston utility companies. The T. W. House Bank collapsed during a national bank crisis in 1907. House filed for bankruptcy and the bank property was sold to the First National Bank of Houston. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed T. W. House, Jr., to the office of Houston postmaster. He served in that position, with his offices located on this site, until 1922. He died in 1923 and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery. The T. W. House Postal Station in Houston Heights was named in his honor. (1998)

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.
• Emancipation Park — 1.5 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 — 1.8 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 — 2.5 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Old Houston Academy — steps away
• Christ Church Cathedral — steps away
• M. D. Anderson — steps away
• Anderson, Clayton & Co. — steps away