Ellwood-Craig House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, if you ever find yourself rolling through Jefferson County and you spot a house that looks like it wandered in from ancient Rome, well, there's a story behind that. They call it the Ellwood-Craig House, though it answers to another name too.

The Pompeiian Villa. And that name alone is worth a few miles of your attention. The house was built in 1900, designed as a winter home for a man named Isaac L.

Ellwood, born in 1833, gone in 1910, and in between those two years, he became the principal developer of barbed wire. Think about that for a moment. Barbed wire.

The stuff that changed the shape of the American West, fenced in the open range, and redrew what property even meant out here. That man wanted a winter house, and he didn't think small. He brought in architects G.

C. Nimmons and W. K.

Fellows, out of Chicago, and they designed something in classic revival style, complete with a raised Roman Doric portico. In Texas. In 1900.

Now as for that name, the Pompeiian Villa, the marker is careful about this, and so am I. It was derived from a planned series of courtyard frescoes of Bacchanalian motif, reminiscent of ancient Pompeii. Planned.

But never rendered. So the frescoes that gave this house its grand Roman name were never actually painted. The vision was there.

The walls were ready. The paint never came. There's something almost poetic in that, a house named for art that exists only in intention.

Then in 1903, the house passed into the life of G. M. Craig, a Port Arthur pioneer, and he made it his home all the way until 1950.

That is a long stretch of living inside someone else's Roman dream. The Ellwood-Craig House. Built for a baron of barbed wire, named for frescoes that never were, and inhabited for decades by a man who simply made it his own.

Some houses carry their stories in their walls. This one carries them in the walls that were never painted.

What the marker says

(Pompeiian Villa) Built in 1900 as the winter home of Isaac L. Ellwood (1833-1910), principal developer of barbed wire. Architects G. C. Nimmons and W. K. Fellows, of Chicago, designed the house in a classic revival style with a raised Roman Doric portico. The name was derived from a planned, but unrendered, series of courtyard frescoes of Bacchanalian motif, reminiscent of ancient Pompeii. Port Arthur pioneer G. M. Craig lived here from 1903 until 1950. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974