Andrew Thompson House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Andrew Thompson House in Red River County. Now settle in, because this story starts with a house that didn't exactly belong. Gothic revival architecture out here in East Texas.

Steeply pitched gables, triangular dormers, diamond-shaped panes catching the light. The kind of place that makes you slow down on the road and wonder how it got there. Well, the marker's got an answer for that, and it starts with a German cabinetmaker named W.

Otto Glossnop. He came to Clarksville back in the 1860s, and when Andrew Thompson needed a home built for his family in 1874, Glossnop was the man for the job. Now a cabinetmaker bringing Gothic revival sensibility to the Texas frontier, that's a combination worth noticing.

Three triangular dormers reaching up toward the sky, those diamond-shaped panes set into the side dormers, the whole roofline pitched steep like something that wandered in from another world entirely. And that's exactly what the marker calls it: an unusual style of architecture in Texas. Unusual is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

The Thompson family had the place for a while, but by 1882 the house was sold to George Burdett, and the Burdett family held onto it. They held on and held on, all the way through to 1947. That's a long tenure for one family in one house, and maybe that says something about what Glossnop built.

A German cabinetmaker's craftsmanship, an East Texas family's loyalty, and one very unexpected roofline still standing in Red River County.

What the marker says

This Gothic revival home was built in 1874 for the family of Andrew Thompson. It was constructed by W. Otto Glossnop, a German cabinetmaker who came to Clarksville in the 1860s. The home was sold to George Burdett in 1882 and remained in that family until 1947. A good example of an unusual style of architecture in Texas, the house features steeply pitched gables with three triangular dormers and diamond-shaped panes in the side dormers. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1984