Wilkerson House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, Bryan, Texas has always had a way of building things to last, and in 1912, a man named Charlie Jenkins set out to prove exactly that. Jenkins wasn't just any builder.

The marker calls him a noted architect and contractor, and when you see what he put up, you start to understand why. What he built that year was a home, a proper one, a variation on the American Four-Square style with a hipped roof, eave brackets, and a wraparound porch that wraps around like it's trying to hold the whole neighborhood in a friendly embrace. And the neighborhood it sat in was no ordinary stretch of street.

This was where Bryan's business leaders lived, the movers and the deciders, the people whose names turned up on deeds and ledgers all through the nineteen-tens and nineteen-twenties. First among those names at this particular address was A.W. Wilkerson, a banker, the kind of man who understood that a solid roof over your head and solid numbers in a ledger amount to about the same thing.

Wilkerson held the place until 1919. Then it passed to a prominent businessman by the name of John Parker, and just like that, the house changed hands without losing a single eave bracket. That's the thing about a well-built place.

The people come and go, but Charlie Jenkins's work just keeps standing there, hipped roof and all, watching Bryan grow up around it.

What the marker says

Built in 1912 by noted Bryan architect and contractor Charlie Jenkins, this home is located in a neighborhood where many of the town's business leaders lived during the 1910s and 1920s. Owned by banker A.W. Wilkerson until 1919, it then was acquired by prominent businessman John Parker. The home, a variation on the American Four-Square style, features a hipped roof, eave brackets, and a wraparound porch. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983