Pillot Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it along to you. There's a building on this site in Houston with a story that stretches back well over a century, and the thing is, the building you're looking at right now isn't exactly the original. Let me explain.

The first structure here was a cast iron front building, and it went up somewhere between 1857 and 1869. Now that's a twelve-year window, which tells you something about how long ambitious construction could take in those days. The man behind it was Eugene Pillot, born in France in 1820, and by the time this building was rising he had made himself into a Houston merchant and civic leader of some standing.

He lived until 1896, and through all those decades the building he built kept changing its coat. Early on, attorneys worked inside those cast iron walls. Real estate brokers.

A dry goods merchant. Practical, respectable commerce, the kind of business that builds a city block by block. Then came a hotel.

A barbershop. Restaurants. Bars.

The building had range, you could say. It knew how to keep up with the neighborhood. After Pillot himself was gone, his heirs held onto the property.

They kept it in the family all the way until 1944. That is a long run for any building, let alone one in a city that never much cared for standing still. But the 1980s were not kind to those old cast iron bones.

The structure suffered severe damage, and in 1988 it collapsed. Gone. After all those tenants and all those years, the building simply came down.

Here is where the story turns, though. The people who cared about this corner didn't walk away from it. A replica was built, and when they built it, they worked some of the original cast iron columns, sills, and lintels right into the new structure.

Pieces of the 1857-to-1869 building, standing again, holding things up. The replica was completed in 1990. Eugene Pillot's cast iron front is back on its corner, carrying a little of the original inside it, which, when you think about it, might be the most Houston ending this story could have gotten.

What the marker says

The original building at this site, a cast iron front structure, was built between 1857 and 1869. Early tenants of the building, owned by French-born merchant and Houston civic leader Eugene Pillot (1820-1896), included attorneys, real estate brokers, and a dry goods merchant. Subsequently a hotel, a barbershop, restaurants, and bars occupied the building. Owned by Pillot heirs until 1944, the structure suffered severe damage in the 1980s and collapsed in 1988. A replica, incorporating some of the original cast iron columns, sills, and lintels, was completed in 1990.