Templeman House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker on the Templeman House tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture Navasota in the mid-1890s. Cotton was king, money was moving, and a young couple by the names of Ward B. and Annie Foster Templeman were just married and ready to put down roots in a serious way.

So they built a house. Not just any house, mind you. A Queen Anne, full and proper, with all the flourish that style demands.

Wraparound porch sweeping around the front, multi-light windows catching every last bit of that East Texas light, and, here's where it gets good, a projecting corner turret crowned with a copper-clad dome. A copper dome. On a house in Navasota.

That is a statement. That is a couple tellin' the whole county exactly where they stand. The house sat right there soaking up that cotton boom energy, a reminder of what Navasota was in those prosperous years when the bolls were white and the money was flowing.

Then came the early twentieth century, and the Templeman house got itself a second act. The brick went on, the lines shifted, and the Prairie School style of architecture started working its way into the bones of the place, modifying what had been a Queen Anne into something newer, something that looked forward even as the old wraparound porch held its ground. Two eras, one house, still standin'.

That copper dome still sittin' up on that corner turret, glinting away like it has something to prove. And honestly, after all this time, it does.

What the marker says

Built in the mid-1890s for newlyweds Ward B. and Annie Foster Templeman, this home is reminiscent of Navasota's early cotton boom era. Originally a Queen Anne design, the house was bricked and modified in the early twentieth century to reflect elements of the Prairie School style of architecture. Prominent features include its wraparound porch, multi-light windows and doors, and copper-clad dome over a projecting corner turret. Incise on base: Spnsored by Capt. and Mrs. W. T. Urquhart Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1987