Hill and Sara McClanahan House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm passing it along to you. Now, some houses just sit there. Four walls, a roof, maybe a porch.

But some houses hold a whole life inside them, and the Hill and Sara McClanahan house up in Cleveland, Texas, is exactly that kind of place. Let me walk you through it. It starts in 1919, when the Eagle Point Oil Company sold off a parcel of land that would become the Louise Hardie Cleveland subdivision, a residential neighborhood tucked just north of the main commercial district of Cleveland.

That's the ground this story is built on, literally. Then, in 1923, Hill and Sara McClanahan moved in. And what happened in that house?

Well, all three of their children came into this world right there in the front bedroom. Not a hospital, not somewhere else down the road. That front bedroom.

Meanwhile, Hill McClanahan was out on Houston Street running a general store and grocery, keeping the family going, keeping the neighborhood fed. The McClanahans held onto that home through the years, through the seasons, through three children growing up under that roof, until 1940, when they sold the house to a man named W. H.

Southward. Southward owned the property all the way until 1967. Now, you might wonder what makes this particular house worth slowing down for on a Texas road trip.

I'll tell you. It's a one-story, craftsman-style bungalow, and it does not apologize for itself. Steeply pitched roof.

Tongue and groove siding. And out front, a porch with four support posts that are genuinely one of a kind, each one featuring a cypress trunk sitting right up above a brick column. Four of them, standing there like they've always known they were something special.

A whole life was lived inside those walls, and the porch is still out front to prove it.

What the marker says

In 1919, the Eagle Point Oil Company sold land which became the Louise Hardie Cleveland subdivision, a residential neighborhood north of the main commercial district of Cleveland. Hill and Sara Mcclanahan moved into this home in 1923. All three of their children were born in the front bedroom. Hill Mcclanahan operated a general store and grocery on Houston Street. In 1940 the Mcclanahans sold the house to W. H. Southward, who owned the property until 1967. The one-story, craftsman-style bungalow features a steeply pitched roof, tongue and groove siding and a prominent front porch with four unique support posts, each with a cypress trunk above a brick column. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2011