Pardon yet another post that's a little more general to Houston history than the South Belt specifically . . .
Back in October, searching through online photographs, I'd found a mystery one that I posted on HAIF's Historic Houston board and was delighted to discover what wonderful sleuths these HAIFers are! You can follow that amazing deduction crowd-sourced-group-think here if you're interested.
This weekend, I came across another, from the HMRC files that only described the glass plate negative as "Mansion, with Fountain."
As you can see, it's seemingly in the middle of nowhere, without any other identifying structures to be spotted. For a place of this size, done in glass plate negatives, which fell out of favor by the Great Depression, it's likely built in the Colonial style of the 20's, which had become much more popular in post-war architecture than the Victorian homes built in Houston in the late 1800s and turn of the century.
And the fountains! Surely, two fountains, one on the side in the cross shape as well as a fountain in front would help identify this place!
look at the size of that circular drive!
And what to make of the fenced lawn across the way?
Zooming in on the front entrance, it appears there is another home across the road, just cut off from the far right with its own gate at the end of the road?
and there are neighbors behind the trees to the left, but no signs to give us any clues
And this single interior shot, also grouped with the outdoors, is just a hint of the opulence.
Why take all the ridiculously heavy glass plate equipment, set up indoors, and take only a single shot?
So I've been combing the oldest online documents available as well as every search term I can think of and every reference trick I know to see if I could pin down what must have been one of the homes of Houston in the 20's.
No luck, yet.
I was wondering if this could be the fabled Simm's mansion at Wayside that seems to have been described exactly once in Marguerite Johnson's Houston, The Unknown City 1836 - 1946 and never (that I can find) photographed, but there is no way to know if this eight-columned, two-fountained place is it.
I kind of doubt it, since Ben Koush's piece "By the Wayside" from Cite 69: Winter 2006 (linked above) quotes Johnson's description as a "winding drive" which this decidedly is not, as well as "stucco-clad" with a swimming pool, but no mention of fountains. People who remember being in the mansion before it was demolished describe it as columned with a huge fountain out front, which fits, but also describe a spiral staircase. If the interior photo above is really attached to these outdoor shots, then that also is a strike against these mystery photos linking up with Simms. Belief that photos exist of the place or those that were once available online have vanished.
In the process, in addition to the 40+ photos I loved pouring over, in the hopes of discovering a photo of the mystery house, from Houston Illustrated, I also grabbed screenshots from some of the other online documents available for download in the public realm from Rice's Digital Scholarship Archive that I wanted to share.
from 1913, Houston as a Setting for the Jewel, Rice Institute
from Ellington, 1918
And from 1921, Houston and South Texas, a reference work
mostly larger buildings, with as many horses as cars
The hunt continues.
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