Howard L. Bass Home

Duane's take

Here's how the marker on the Howard L. Bass Home tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most houses have a story.

This one in Starr County has got layers. The building went up in 1877, and right away you've got to ask yourself: where does a man get lumber out here? Well, the answer is sitting on the bottom of a river somewhere, because that's exactly where this lumber came from.

A sunken steamboat. Somebody looked at a wreck and saw a house, and I'd call that a particular kind of Texas ingenuity. The floors were laid in mesquite block, and the bricks were handmade.

This was not a structure thrown together in a hurry. This was built to last, and it has. The man who built it (or at least the man who made it his home and his place of business) was John Peter Kelsey.

Kelsey was the Starr County judge, and a large landowner besides, a man of some considerable standing along that stretch of the Rio Grande. He hadn't always been there, though. He came from New York, all the way back in 1848, which means by the time that house went up in 1877, he'd already been putting down roots in this corner of Texas for nearly thirty years.

The place carried on. In 1937, it was acquired by L. R.

Brooks. Then in 1954, Howard L. Bass took ownership, and that's the name the house carries today.

Steamboat timber, mesquite floors, handmade brick; and the long shadows of everyone who ever called it home.

What the marker says

Built 1877 of lumber from sunken steamboat; mesquite block flooring; handmade brick. Home and business house of John Peter Kelsey, Starr County judge; large landowner who came from New York in 1848. Acquired by L. R. Brooks 1937; and by Howard L. Bass in 1954.