DUANE
Duane's take
The marker tells it this way, and I'm just passing it along. Now, some houses in Texas get a name because of who built them, or where they sit, or maybe some old piece of history attached to the land. But this house in Bowie County — this one got a name you'd remember at a card table.
They call it the Ace of Clubs House. And once you hear how it's laid out, you'll understand why that name sticks. The building has three groups of octagonal rooms — picture the rounded leaves of a club on a playing card — and those rooms open onto a central rotunda.
Then, reaching back from that rotunda, long rectangular rooms extend outward, forming what amounts to the stem of the club. You stand back far enough and look down at the whole footprint of this place, and there it is. That shape.
Right there in the floorplan. Now, inside that rotunda, they did not skimp. There's a marble mantel.
French mirrors. A spiral stairway winding its way up through the middle of it all. And above all of that, rising twenty feet, a tower crowning the whole structure.
J. H. Draughan built it in 1884.
The Henry Moore family has owned it since 1894. And it's been a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark since 1964. Some hands you fold.
Some hands you hold. And some hands — well, somebody builds a whole house around them.
What the marker says
Has 3 groups of octagonal rooms (leaves of a club) opening on a rotunda backed by long rectangular rooms (the Club's stem). Rotunda has a marble mantel, French mirrors and spiral stairway and is topped with 20-foot tower. Built 1884 by J. H. Draughan. Owned since 1894 by Henry Moore family. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964