Dr. E. L. and Nannie Lewis Walker House

Edgar Lathgro Walker of Tennessee married Nannie E. Lewis, a native of Kentucky, in 1891, and after visiting Gladewater with their daughters Lena and Alma to see E.L.'s brother William, they decided to remain there. Their third daughter, Bessie, was born in Gladewater in 1898. A graduate of the Cincinnati School of Medicine, E.L. opened a medical practice and drugstore, bought this site from W.S. and Sara Austin on October 23, 1895, and, with Nannie, completed their new home sometime before 1910. Their property eventually stretched to the Sabine River and included several barns, a cookhouse, oil wells and derricks, and oil storage tanks. The house, whose main body was constructed of concrete blocks, was designed in the Neoclassical style with a symmetrical façade, a pronounced two-story portico, Ionic columns, a five-bay front, and a pedimented dormer window. The three-story structure also had two concrete basements. Although the third floor was first intended for use as an infirmary, it served as an attic with access to a rooftop widow's walk. Original features included ten fireplaces, a two-floor elevator, and fifteen rooms, and a concrete balustrade too heavy for the second-floor porch became a distinctive fence. Later changes included added rooms and the removal of the elevator, which was donated to a World War II scrap metal drive. After her parents died, Bessie Walker and her husband Otto Staerker lived in the house, and it remained in the family until 1969. Later owners preserved it as a landmark and a link to the Walker family and early Gladewater.

Gladewater, Texas · United States