Adriance-Springer House

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm followin' the official marker on this one, so let the record show what the record says. This is the story of the Adriance-Springer House in Galveston County, and it is a story worth tellin' slow. In 1914, a house went up for the family of a businessman named John Adriance, a man the marker describes as instrumental in Galveston's early development.

Instrumental. That's a word that carries weight, and the house carries weight too, literally and figuratively. The designer was L.

S. Green, and what Green put together was not a house that could be accused of making up its mind too quickly. We're talkin' a mixture of styles, all of them apparently deciding to get along under one roof.

You've got an entry portico held up by colossal Doric order columns, and when a marker uses the word colossal, you believe it. You've also got a craftsman style gable, a wraparound porch that invites you to stay a while, a porte cochere for your carriage or your automobile, and an arched basement tucked underneath all that ambition. Now, John Adriance's family kept the house through the teens and the twenties, right up to 1929.

That's when it was sold to Oscar Springer, a man the marker calls a business and civic leader, which is the kind of title that means people kept calling on you long after you wished they'd stop. The Springer family made this house their own, and they stayed. They stayed all the way until 1960.

That is a family that found something worth holding onto. One house, two families, one remarkable designer, and a Galveston address that has been earning its place in the story of that city for a very long time.

What the marker says

This house was built in 1914 for the family of businessman John Adriance, who was instrumental in Galveston's early development. It was sold in 1929 to business and civic leader Oscar Springer, whose family continued to live here until 1960. Designed by L. S. Green, the house reflects a mixture of styles and features an entry portico with colossal Doric order columns, a craftsman style gable, wraparound porch, porte cochere, and arched basement. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1989