Simmons House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best by the story. Out in Sweetwater, in Nolan County, there stands a house with a little secret baked right into its bones. It looks like it's always been two stories tall, proud and sure of itself, with that Spanish Colonial Revival flair, the barrel tile roof catching the west Texas light, the bracketed soffits, the bow window, and that Classical frontispiece framing the front door like the house is dressed for company.

But here's the thing. It wasn't always that way. Robert Mosby Simmons built this place back in 1919, and he built it modest.

One story. Solid, respectable, the kind of house that suits a man who's working his way up. And Robert Mosby Simmons was very much a man working his way up.

He'd become a noted civic leader in Sweetwater, and he served as president of the Sweetwater Cotton Oil Company for many years. A man of standing, in other words. A man who, by 1934, had decided his house ought to reflect that standing a little more.

So he hired an architect. Not just any architect, mind you. He brought in Anton Korn, out of Dallas.

And between 1934 and 1935, Anton Korn went to work, lifting that one-story structure up and reshaping it into the two-story home you'd recognize today, wrapping it in all that Spanish Colonial Revival character that gives it such a presence on the street. Robert Mosby Simmons was born in 1887 and passed in 1955, and the house he built and rebuilt outlasted him, still standing, still wearing the style Anton Korn gave it, still looking like it always knew exactly what it wanted to be.

What the marker says

Robert Mosby Simmons (1887-1955), noted civic leader and president of the Sweetwater Cotton Oil Company for many years, originally built this house as a one-story structure in 1919. In 1934-35 he hired architect Anton Korn of Dallas to remodel it into its present two-story configuration. The Spanish Colonial Revival home features a barrel tile roof, bracketed soffits, bow window, and Classical frontispiece around the front door. Recorded Texas Historical Landmark, 1987