DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this place. Now settle in, because this story starts with a house, but it ends up being about a whole lot more than four walls and a roof. Around 1910, on a street in Abilene, Texas, a two-story brick home came to life.
Well, not brick at first, but we'll get to that. It was designed by Abilene architect William P. Preston, and it was built for William Gray Swenson and his wife Shirley, who went by McCollum before she took that Swenson name.
William Gray was first-generation Swedish-American, and if you're looking for a man who could not sit still when there was business to be done, you just found him. He held leadership positions at Citizens National Bank from the time of its founding in 1902 all the way until the 1960s. That is not a short chapter in anybody's life.
But the bank was only the beginning. He also presided over Abilene Light and the Abilene Ice Company. He worked to establish and served on the boards of both the Abilene and Northern Railroad and the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific Railroad.
Two railroads. And if that still wasn't enough, his real estate projects included the Mims Building in 1926 and the Hilton Hotel in 1927. The man was building a city, more or less, while also raising four children inside this very home with Shirley.
They were founding members of St. Paul Methodist Church, too, because apparently William Gray Swenson considered Sunday a fine day for laying groundwork as well. Now, the house itself has a story of its own.
It started life with cypress siding on the outside, cypress columns on the porch, and a wood shake roof overhead. That was the home the children grew up in. Then 1928 came along, and somebody decided it was time for a change.
The original cypress siding got covered with buff brick veneer. Those exterior cypress columns were replaced with brick columns. The wood shake roof was converted to clay tile.
A porch on the south side was enclosed, and a second-floor sunroom was added. The bones underneath all that renovation, though, still carry the hallmarks of prairie architectural style, those broad overhangs and long horizontal lines that make a house look like it belongs to the land it's sitting on. And if you look close, you'll catch the Mission-style touches too, quatrefoil windows and a curved dormer arching right over the front entrance.
It's a house that knows what it is. William Gray Swenson passed in 1969, and Shirley followed in 1974. After that, ownership of the home stayed in the Swenson family, because some things are hard to let go of.
It wasn't until 1986 that the house was donated to the Abilene Preservation League. A first-generation Swedish-American entrepreneur built something in Abilene that outlasted him by decades, and the city made sure it would last a good while longer.
What the marker says
This two-story brick home was designed by abilene architect William P. Preston for the family of William Gray and Shirley (McCollum) Swenson, and was completed ca. 1910. Swenson was a first generation Swedish-American, and he was a lifelong entrepreneur and businessman in Abilene. He held leadership positions at Citizens National Bank from the time of its founding in 1902 until the 1960s and also presided over Abilene Light and the Abilene Ice Company. Swenson worked to establish and served on the boards of both the Abilene and Northern Railroad and the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific Railroad. His real estate projects included the Mims Building (1926) and the Hilton Hotel (1927). The Swensons were founding members of St. Paul Methodist Church, and they raised their four children in this home. The house’s original cypress siding was covered with buff brick veneer in 1928, exterior cypress columns were replaced with brick columns, and the wood shake roof was converted to clay tile. Also during this renovation, a porch on the south side was enclosed and a second floor sunroom was added. The home features the broad overhangs and long, horizontal lines indicative of the prairie architectural style. Mission-style elements include quatrefoil windows and a curved dormer over the front entrance. After the deaths of W.G. Swenson in 1969 and Shirley Swenson in 1974, ownership of the house remained in the Swenson family until 1986, when it was donated to the Abilene Preservation League.