Holcombe House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Holcombe House, right there in Harris County. Now, if you're going to build a house in Houston, you might as well build one worth talking about. Oscar Holcombe knew that.

Businessman, developer, and a man who apparently couldn't stay out of city hall no matter how hard he tried, Holcombe hired Houston architect L. W. Lindsay to design him and his wife Mary a proper home.

And Lindsay delivered. The house was completed in 1925, and it came with gardens laid out by landscape architect Herbert L. Skogland.

So right from the start, you had craft layered on craft. The house itself is Tudor revival style, and it doesn't hide that fact one bit. You've got a gabled and hipped roofscape, decorative half-timbering, a bay window, an elaborate chimney, and an entry portico dressed up with decorative brickwork.

The kind of place that makes you stop your car and just look for a moment. Now here's where the story gets a little extraordinary. Oscar Holcombe served eleven terms as mayor of Houston.

Not eleven consecutive terms, mind you. Eleven nonconsecutive terms, between 1921 and 1957. The man kept coming back.

Houston kept calling him back. You have to wonder what that front porch felt like, all those years, between stints running one of the biggest cities in Texas. And through all of it, through every term and every campaign and every year in between, Holcombe stayed right there in that house.

He lived there until his death in 1968. Same house. Same chimney.

Same gardens Herbert Skogland laid out back in 1925. Some men build a house. Oscar Holcombe built a life inside one, and that house is still standing to prove it.

What the marker says

Businessman and developer Oscar Holcombe (1888-1968) and his wife Mary hired Houston architect L. W. Lindsay to design this home. Completed in 1925, it featured gardens designed by landscape architect Herbert L. Skogland. Outstanding features of the Tudor revival style house include a gabled and hipped roofscape, decorative half-timbering, a bay window, an elaborate chimney, and an entry portico with decorative brickwork. Holcombe, who served eleven nonconsecutive terms as mayor of Houston between 1921 and 1957, continued to live here until his death. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1991