Sessums & Virginia Cleveland House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I tell it to you. In 1911, the architectural firm of Sanguinet and Staats put their name on a design, and a builder named W. C.

Fulsher brought it to life in Harris County. The result was a home for Alexander Sessums Cleveland and his wife Virginia, and it was not a modest one. The man they called Sess Cleveland was the kind of civic figure a city leans on.

He served as Vice President of the Courtlandt Improvement Association, as President of the Houston Public School Board, and as a Trustee of the Rice Institute. He and Virginia were Episcopal Church leaders too. This was a house that needed to carry some weight, and Sanguinet and Staats built it to do exactly that.

Now here is where the story gets interesting, because that house is not one thing. It is three things at once. Classical in its plan and its porticos.

Italianate in its roof and those wide eave overhangs. And then Prairie Style comes in, quiet and deliberate, in the window treatments, the sidelights, the transom. Three architectural languages, one conversation, and somehow it works.

The Cleveland family kept that house in the family all the way until 1971. Sixty years of one name on one address, through everything a city like Houston throws at you. Sess and Virginia are long gone, but the house Sanguinet and Staats drew up and W.

C. Fulsher built is still standing there, still Classical, still Italianate, still Prairie, all at the same time. Some houses just refuse to be only one thing.

What the marker says

Designed by the prominent architectural firm of Sanguinet & Staats and built by W. C. Fulsher in 1911, this was the home of civic and Episcopal Church leaders Alexander Sessums Cleveland, Vice President of the Courtlandt Improvement Association, and his wife Virginia. "Sess" Cleveland served as President of the Houston Public School Board and as a Trustee of the Rice Institute. The house is a fine example of early 20th century eclectic styles--Classical in its plan and porticos, Italianate in its roof and eave overhang, and Prairie Style in its window treatments, sidelights and transom. It remained in the Cleveland family until 1971. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999