John F. Floyd House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. A Confederate veteran of the Civil War named John F. Floyd came to Texarkana in 1881, and if you think the story ends there, well, you have not been paying attention to how this part of Texas works.

Floyd was born in 1846, and by the time 1923 rolled around he had left a mark on this corner of Bowie County that you can still stand in front of and study. He ran a lumber business, and he ran it well enough that by 1903 he decided his family deserved something more than a place to sleep. He decided they deserved a statement.

So he had a home built, and whoever he hired knew exactly what moment in American architecture they were living through. The country was stepping out of the long shadow of the Victorian era and reaching toward something cleaner, something Classical, and the Floyd house landed right in the middle of that transition. Palladian windows in the gable ends, art glass transoms catching the light, paired colonnettes standing at attention along the porch.

It is the kind of house that makes you stop your car. A man comes out of the Civil War, makes his way to Texarkana, builds a lumber business from the ground up, and then in 1903 he puts all of it into stone and glass and wood and says, here. This is what I did with my time.

Hard to argue with that.

What the marker says

A Confederate veteran of the Civil War, John F. Floyd (1846-1923) moved to Texarkana in 1881. The successful owner of a lumber business, he had this home built for his family in 1903. Reflecting the turn-of-the-century transition from Victorian influences toward more Classical Revival detailing in architecture, the Floyd home features Palladian windows in the gable ends, art glass transoms, and paired colonnettes on the porch. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1989