Hagerty-Harris House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, the story of the Hagerty-Harris House in Harrison County starts the way the best Texas stories do: with a man running from something, and building something else entirely in its place. William P.

Hagerty was born in Ireland in 1844, and at some point he fled his native country as a rebel. Whatever that chapter looked like, the next one found him in Texas, working as the personal engineer to George J. Gould, president of the Texas and Pacific Railroad.

That is not a bad position to land in when you're a man who once had to run. In 1889, the craftsmen from the Texas and Pacific Railroad shops built Hagerty a residence out of handpressed brick. Not bought brick, not shipped brick.

Handpressed. The kind of construction that tells you right away somebody wanted this house to mean something. And inside, some of the rooms were decorated with stenciled canvas ceilings.

You walk in expecting a railroad man's house, and you look up and find something closer to a painting. Hagerty married a woman named Mollie Allbright, and together they raised five children inside those handpressed walls. He died in 1906.

Mollie followed in 1907. The house kept standing, the way houses do, long after the people who loved them are gone. But standing is not the same as thriving.

By 1972, the place had fallen into bad deterioration. Years of neglect had worked on it the way years of neglect will. That's when the families of Dr.

James H. Harris and his son Dr. Rush C.

Harris stepped in. They purchased it, and they restored it. Two generations of one family, deciding together that this house still had something worth saving.

A rebel's house, built by railroad craftsmen, decorated with stenciled skies on the ceilings, now carrying a new family's name alongside the old one. The Hagerty-Harris House. Still standing in Harrison County, and still worth looking up at.

What the marker says

Texas & Pacific Railroad shop craftsmen built this residence of handpressed bricks in 1889 for William P. Hagerty (1844-1906), personal engineer of T. & P. President George J. Gould. Stenciled canvas ceilings decorate some rooms. Hagerty, who fled his native Ireland as a rebel, married Mollie Allbright (d. 1907) and had five children. The house was badly deteriorated in 1972 when it was purchased and restored by the families of Dr. James H. Harris and his son Dr. Rush C. Harris. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1977