Houghton House

Duane's take

The official marker tells this story, and here's how I tell it. You're rolling through Potter County, and there's a brick house that's been standing since nineteen fourteen, watching decades go by like cattle through a gate. Let me tell you about it.

A Kentucky native named John Malcolm Shelton came up in the world and landed in the Panhandle, where he made himself a prominent cattleman and businessman. The man was doing well enough that in nineteen fourteen he commissioned a real house, a two-story brick residence, something that said he'd arrived and intended to stay. He brought in W.M.

Rice to build it, and for the design, he turned to Joseph Champ Berry, an Amarillo architect. Now Berry didn't reach for just any style. He gave Shelton a home with detailing of the Prairie Style, that long, low, horizontal sensibility that was making its mark on American architecture at the time.

Brick and craft and intention, all of it assembled right there in Potter County. Shelton was born in eighteen fifty-two, and he passed in nineteen twenty-three, which means he had those years in that house, living in something built to his measure. When he was gone, the house passed to his daughter Martha.

Martha was the wife of rancher Ted Houghton, and that's where the name you see on the marker comes from. She didn't just inherit the place and move on. She lived there, made it home, all the way until nineteen sixty-five.

More than fifty years that house stood occupied by the family it was built for. That's not nothing. That's a house doing exactly what a house is supposed to do.

The Houghton House, still standing in brick and Prairie Style detail, still carrying the names of the people who called it theirs.

What the marker says

This two-story residence was constructed in 1914 for Kentucky native John Malcolm Shelton (1852-1923), a prominent Panhandle cattleman and businessman. Built by W.M. Rice, it was designed by Amarillo architect Joseph Champ Berry. Following Shelton's death, the house was inherited by his daughter Martha, the wife of rancher Ted Houghton. She resided here until 1965. Built of brick, the home features detailing of the Prairie Style. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980