W. L. and Susan Clayton

The plaque names the Marshall Plan; the Handbook shows the free-trade convictions behind it. Clayton fought the New Deal's farm program, arguing that any subsidies should go straight to farmers instead of propping up prices. He joined the American Liberty League in 1934 and quit it the next year. In 1936 he came around to Roosevelt because Secretary of State Cordell Hull was pressing reciprocal trade agreements, a cause Clayton had long backed. From 1940 he served under the coordinator of inter-American affairs, at the Export-Import Bank and in Commerce. After 1947 he kept attending world trade conferences.

What the plaque says

W. L. and Susan Clayton Mississippi native William Lockhart Clayton (1880-1966) left school early to become a court reporter. His skill attracted an executive of the American Cotton Company and he moved first to St. Louis then to the New York office the following year. He soon became Assistant General Manager in 1904. He organized a partnership with his sister's husband Frank E. Anderson and the latter's brother Monroe D. Anderson in forming Anderson, Clayton & Company in Oklahoma City. They were joined in 1905 by Will's brother Benjamin. By 1916, two years after the Houston ship channel opened, and in the midst of World War I, the firm moved its headquarters to Houston. During the war, Clayton served on the Committee on Cotton Distribution of the War Industries Board, then returned to the firm, which greatly expanded into international markets. Before World War II, he returned to government service, later becoming Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (1945-47) under George C. Marshall. He is widely recognized as a principal architect of the Post-World War II Marshall Plan. Susan Vaughan (1881-1960), born in Kentucky, wed Will Clayton in 1902. She worked with noted architect Birdsall P. Briscoe on their home at this site, later advising him on other family homes in the River Oaks subdivision. Noted for her architectural taste, Sue was also known for philanthropic work, raising funds for the Fine Arts Museum, supporting women's suffrage and helping build low-income housing. The Claytons bequeathed their nearby home to Houston's public library. It is now the site of one of the country's foremost centers for genealogical research. The Claytons' legacy continues to enhance Houston culture and resources and their descendants still support programs and institutions the couple began. (2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 0.2 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 0.9 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 — 1.0 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.
• The Menil Collection — 1.1 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• Maurice Joseph Sullivan — steps away
• St. Paul's United Methodist Church — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Houston — steps away
• The Garden Club of Houston — 0.3 mi