Earl-Rochelle House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Earl-Rochelle House in Bowie County. Now, most houses just sit there. This one has been performing since 1899.

It was built that year for a man named John W. Earl, a realtor and merchant out of Texarkana, born in 1861 and gone by 1925. And here's the thing that makes you stop and look twice: this wasn't just any house John Earl commissioned.

It was the last of three nearly identical homes built in Texarkana. Three of them. Like the city couldn't get enough of a good thing.

The Earl-Rochelle House is what survived to tell the tale. And what a thing to survive as. Architects call it Queen Anne style, and if you know what that means, you're already picturing the asymmetrical roofline, the gables stacking up against each other, the polygonal turrets rising at unexpected angles.

It is, in the language of the marker, a complex roofscape. That's a polite way of saying the builder was showing off, and good for him. Look closer at those gable ends and you'll find Eastlake detailing in the decorative treatment there, a whole layer of craftsmanship most folks walk right past.

John Earl's family called this place home, and then the years moved on the way years do. By 1929, James F. Rochelle, born in 1864, and his wife Ella Jo, born in 1873 and a McMickle before she was a Rochelle, took ownership.

They held onto this house all the way to 1966. Ella Jo outlasted them all, born 1873, gone in 1966. That roofscape saw a lot of Texas sky under her watch.

The house carries both families in its name now, Earl and Rochelle, which feels right. Some buildings just accumulate the weight of the people who loved them, and this one, turrets and gables and all, has been doing exactly that since the last year of the nineteenth century.

What the marker says

The last of three nearly identical homes built in Texarkana, the Earl-Rochelle house was constructed in 1899 for realtor and merchant John W. Earl (1861-1925) and his family. An excellent example of Queen Anne style with asymmetrical composition, the home features a complex roofscape incorporating gables and polygonal turrets. Eastlake detailing is evident in the decorative gable end treatment. James F. (1864-1938) and Ella Jo (McMickle) (1873-1966) Rochelle owned the home from 1929 to 1966. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1997