DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll spin it out for you the way Duane does. A Mediterranean style villa sitting right there on the edge of a lagoon off the Colorado River — now that's not something you stumble across every day in Texas, but there it stands, and it's been standing since 1916. That's the year Henry H. and Clara Driscoll Sevier had it built, and they called it Laguna Gloria, named for that nearby lagoon.
Say that name out loud — Laguna Gloria — and you can almost feel the shade of a live oak and hear the water movin' slow. The home is stuccoed in that Mediterranean style, and one of its decorative touches echoes a window at the San Jose Mission down in San Antonio. Somebody had an eye for beauty, no question about it.
Now, Clara Driscoll Sevier — you may know that name from a different chapter of Texas history altogether. She's best known for her efforts to preserve the Alamo. The woman had a gift for recognizing what was worth saving.
And in 1943, she proved it one more time, conveying the Laguna Gloria site to the Texas Fine Arts Association. That was her choice, her act, her final word on what should become of the place she'd built and named and lived in. Today, the homesite is owned by the Laguna Gloria Art Museum.
A villa built for two people with a sense of history, passed on to a cause that keeps art alive. Out here on a Texas road, that's the kind of story that makes you look twice at the next old building you pass — because you never know what somebody once chose to save.
What the marker says
This Mediterranean style villa was built in 1916 for Henry H. and Clara Driscoll Sevier. Named Laguna Gloria for a nearby lagoon off the Colorado River, the stuccoed home features a decorative window at San Jose Mission in San Antonio. In 1943 the site was conveyed to the Texas Fine Arts Assoc. by Clara Driscoll, best known for her efforts to pereserve the Alamo. Her homesite is now owned by Laguna Gloria Art Museum. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983