McNamara House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Victoria County, there stands a house that has outlasted the cotton seasons, the wool markets, and just about everything else the years could throw at it. The McNamara House.

Built in the 1870s by a man named W.J. McNamara, and friend, that name carried some weight in this town. McNamara wasn't just a builder.

He was a town council member, and he dealt in cotton, wool, and hides. The kinds of commerce that built South Texas from the ground up. Now, when a man like that builds a house, he doesn't build it small, and he doesn't build it plain.

What W.J. McNamara put up was Rural Victorian Gothic architecture. Out here on the Texas coastal plain, that style had a way of stopping people in their tracks.

Something about those Gothic lines rising up out of flat country just commands your attention. It's unexpected, and it means to be. The house passed through time, through families, through the long quiet years that old structures sometimes endure, until 1959, when the McNamara-O'Connor family made a decision that doesn't happen every day.

They donated it. Just gave it over, so it could become something the whole community could walk into. It was restored as a Historical and Fine Arts Museum.

A place where history and art found the same roof, which, if you think about it, isn't such a strange pairing. History is its own kind of art. That house started as one man's stake in a growing town, a cotton and wool dealer with a seat on the council and an eye for architecture.

It ended up belonging to everyone. Not a bad legacy for a building still standing.

What the marker says

Built 1870's by W.J. McNamara, town council member and dealer in cotton, wool, hides. Rural Victorian Gothic architecture. Donated by McNamara- O'Connor family in 1959. Restored as Historical and Fine Arts Museum. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965