Porter Cottage

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. This is the story of the Porter Cottage, down in Cameron County. It starts in 1928, when John R.

Harris, Jr., and Mary Helen Harris purchased a lot and set about building something worth building. They brought in architect R. Newell Waters, and what Waters drew up was a one-story, brick veneer manorial suburban cottage.

Now, that phrase, manorial suburban cottage, is doing a lot of work. Manorial suggests grandeur. Suburban suggests restraint.

Waters apparently believed you could have both, and looking at what he put on paper in 1928, it seems he was right. By 1930, the house had moved on to new hands. A land developer named Reginald Porter bought the place, and then eight years later he conveyed it to his son, Dean Porter, born in 1903, and Dean's wife, Gladys Sams Porter, born in 1910.

Dean and Gladys took root. They engaged in ranching and real estate development out in the Olmito area, which is exactly the kind of work that keeps a family anchored to a piece of ground. But Gladys, she cast a wider net.

She was involved with the Nurses Aid Program for the American Red Cross. She was involved with the Brownsville Junior Service League. And somewhere along the way, the Gladys Porter Zoo was named in her honor.

A zoo named for a woman. That is not a small thing. Dean passed in 1969, and Gladys in 1980, and the house itself kept right on standing.

In 1969, a humorist and writer named Sam Huddleston moved in with his wife Dorothy, and the two of them called that brick veneer cottage home all the way through 1997. Nearly three decades of, one imagines, good stories told inside those walls. A humorist in a manorial cottage.

R. Newell Waters probably would have approved.

What the marker says

In 1928, John R. Harris, Jr., and Mary Helen Harris purchased this lot and constructed a one-story, brick veneer manorial suburban cottage designed by architect R. Newell Waters. In 1930, land developer Reginald Porter bought the house, and eight years later conveyed the house to his son, Dean Porter (1903-1969), and his wife, Gladys Sams Porter (1910-1980). Dean and Gladys engaged in ranching and real estate development in the Olmito area. Gladys was also involved with the Nurses Aid Program for the American Red Cross and the Brownsville Junior Service League. The Gladys Porter Zoo was named in her honor. Humorist and writer Sam Huddleston and his wife, Dorothy, lived in the house from 1969-1997.