DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way down in Cameron County, on the edge of what folks were just starting to call West Brownsville, Edgar and Goldye Hicks made a decision in 1908 that would echo for more than a century. They bought a piece of property from the Brownsville Land and Investment Co., and what they built on it wasn't just a house — it was a statement.
West Brownsville was the first subdivision outside the original townsite, and the Hicks were among the very first to plant roots there. You don't do that without a certain confidence in the future. Now, the house they built had something to say for itself.
Queen Anne style, with a pyramidal roof rising up to meet the south Texas sky, cross gables cut through with dormer windows, shiplap siding, and a wraparound porch held up by Doric columns. This was not a modest structure. The Hicks weren't modest people.
They ran a livery stable over on East Adams Street, and out here at their country home they kept a servant's house and a large stable to go along with the main house. A whole little world unto itself. Then 1922 rolls around, and the Hicks sell to Dr.
O.V. and Nancy Lawrence. Now Dr. Lawrence — this is a man worth knowing about.
Civic leader. School board president. Junior college president.
And on top of all that, a regional pioneer of X-ray technology. In a place and time when most folks were still getting used to the idea of electricity, this man was harnessing invisible waves to see inside the human body. The Lawrences settled into that fine Queen Anne house with its columns and its gables, and for a while, life on that property must have felt about as solid as those Doric columns.
But September of 1933 had other plans. A hurricane came through — the kind that doesn't negotiate — and it destroyed the property's outbuildings. The stable.
The servant's house. Gone. What the Hicks had assembled piece by piece, the storm took in a single night.
The main house, though, stood. Queen Anne-style pyramidal roof, cross gables, dormer windows, shiplap siding, wraparound porch and all. And that's the thing about a well-built house in a hard country — sometimes it outlasts everything else you thought was permanent.
What the marker says
Edgar and Goldye Hicks bought this property from the Brownsville Land and Investment Co. in 1908. Their house was one of the first built in West Brownsville, the first subdivision outside the original townsite. The Queen Anne style house features a pyramidal roof, cross gables with dormer windows, shiplap siding and a wraparound porch with Doric columns. The Hicks owned a livery stable on East Adams Street, and this country home included a servant's house and a large stable. In 1922 Dr. O.V. and Nancy Lawrence bought the house. Dr. Lawrence was a civic leader, school board and junior college president, and regional pioneer of X-ray technology. The Sept. 1933 hurricane destroyed the property's outbuildings. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2008