Steele House

Duane's take

The way the marker at Steele House tells it, here's what happened on this corner of Grimes County, just outside Navasota. Two brothers named Steele, and they weren't doing anything small. Back in the late 1800s, both of them were running large cotton operations near Navasota, out at Allen Farm, and when it came time to settle down and build a life, they did it the way only brothers can.

Diagonally across the same corner from each other. Close enough to keep an eye on things. Or maybe on each other.

The marker doesn't say which. Now, A. G.

Steele, born in 1853, and his wife Etta, they decided in 1896 that they were going to build something worth looking at. They hired contractor J. E.

Watkins, and what Watkins delivered was a late Victorian home dressed up in Eastlake architectural features, the kind that make the porches and entrances look like somebody took genuine pride in every last detail. And somebody did. That house became home to descendants of A.

G. and Etta Steele all the way through 1970. A. G. himself was gone by 1900, but the house kept going, kept holding family, kept standing on that corner.

Then Syd and Margaret Van Wagner came into the picture. By 1974, they owned the place and were committed to preserving it. A cotton operation fades.

A well-built house, tended by the right hands, has a way of outlasting just about everything else.

What the marker says

In the late 1800s, two brothers named Steele had large cotton operations near Navasota, at Allen Farm, and residences diagonally across this corner from each other. A. G. Steele (1853-1900) and wife Etta had this late Victorian home built in 1896 by contractor J. E. Watkins. Eastlake architectural features embellish the porches and entrances. Descendants lived here until 1970. the house now (1974) is owned and preserved by Syd and Margaret Van Wagner. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974