DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some houses just stand there. Four walls, a roof, a place to hang your hat.
But then there are houses that carry something — that hold onto what came before and refuse to let it go. The Jones-Hunt House in Harris County is that second kind. Listen close.
When Sarah Brashear Jones found herself a widow — her husband, state senator James W. Jones, gone — she didn't disappear quietly into grief. She called on Alfred C.
Finn, a noted Houston architect, and she told him what she wanted. And what she wanted was memory, built into the walls. Finn had a reputation, and he earned it here.
He took the oak woodwork from the Jones family's 1893 home — the windows, the doors, the wainscoting, the grand staircase — and he wove every last piece of it into a brand new post-World War One house. Think about that for a moment. The bones of one era, living inside the body of another.
That's not just construction. That's something closer to devotion. And the house Finn built around all that salvaged memory?
It was no ordinary box. Tudor revival styling, they call it — a wide central gable, a two-story off-center parapeted entrance portico, an arched opening held up by pilasters, and a porte cochere sweeping along the side like the house itself was expecting company. In 1921, Sarah moved in.
With her came her daughter Irma and son-in-law William C. Hunt. Three people crossing a threshold into a house that already held decades of their story.
And then — this is the part that'll stay with you — five generations of that family lived inside those walls. Five generations. From 1921 all the way to 1989.
The oak woodwork that started life in 1893 outlasted the century it was born in, carrying faces and voices and Sunday mornings through every year of it. Some houses just stand there. This one kept watch.
What the marker says
Noted Houston architect Alfred C. Finn designed this home for Sarah (Brashear) Jones, widow of state senator James W. Jones. Finn melded the oak woodwork of the Jones’ 1893 home, including the windows, doors, wainscoting and grand staircase, into this post-WWI house. The tudor revival styling features a wide central gable, a two-story off-center parapeted entrance portico, an arched opening supported by pilasters, and a porte cochere. Sarah, her daughter Irma and son-in-law William C. Hunt moved into the house in 1921; five generations of this family lived here until 1989.