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2002 Terry Winner - Sanders-McNeil House, Beaumont, TX

OTHER AWARDS: National Register of Historic Places, 1978; Recorded Texas Landmark, 1982.

HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE: Contractor James Wellman built this elaborate, Queen-Anne style house in 1895 for Robert Washington Sanders. Sited in the oldest residential neighborhood in Beaumont , it serves as a reminder of the days, prior to Spindletop, when the city was a hub of the lumber industry. Sanders originally came from Tennesse. His father taught him carpentry, and he was apprenticed to a stairbuilder in Nashville . In 1874, at age 24, Sanders left Tennessee for Texas and settled in Dallas as an employee of the Texas & Pacific Railroad. Four years later, in 1878, Sanders moved to Beaumont , which then had a population of about 300. He opened a planing mill, but in 1885 went to work for the Reliance Lumber Company as a mill superintendent. When Kirby Lumber bought Reliance in 1902, Sanders retired and struck out on his own as a furniture maker and master carver. The house's interior is filled with his carvings, of which the most impressive are the spiral staircase and fireplace mantels. These give the house a distinctive appearance which is absent from more conventional late-Victorian homes whose detailing was factory-made. Several other Beaumont buildings contain examples of Sanders' work, including the altar at First Methodist Church and the spiral staircase at First Baptist Church (now the Tyrrell Historical Library). He carved four pulpits of chinaberry that he gave to churches (First Methodist and First Presbyterian of Beaumont and two in Tennessee ). The motifs in his carvings are reminiscent of Arts & Crafts designs popularized by William Morris. In some ways, the history, structure, and décor of the Sanders-McNeill house express the tension, between industrial mass-production and traditional craftsmanship, which was rampant in the American workplace during the Gilded Age. Trained as a craftsman but employed as a mill manager, Sanders continued to feel a need to express artistic impulses. For example, he carved a table of mahogany, magnolia, and curly pine, showing Shakespeare's seven ages of man and decorated with Texas symbols, like the mockingbird, a rose, and a state map. The interior of the Sanders-McNeill House is the largest extant collection of his carvings. The family's collection appears to have perished in a fire at his daughter's home in 1966, in which she was killed.

HISTORY OF THE STRUCTURE: The residence contains ten rooms, a circular tower, seven fireplaces, five galleries, and two staircases. The exterior is cypress. Much of the interior is pine, but Sanders also used ash, cedar, holly, and curly pine. The walls were plastered, except in the kitchen. Whereas the ground floor contains elaborate woodwork, the trim on the upper floor is simple and unadorned. Research shows that the upper story was often rented, hence the simplicity of the decoration. The 1900 census shows five boarders in the house: two real estate agents, two dry goods clerks, and an electrician. Sanders and his wife, Ida Mae Stewart, had three children. The son, Robert Lytle Sanders, died in a train accident in 1910 at the age of 24. The eldest daughter, Henrietta, never married and died at this house. The other daughter, Pearl , married in her early forties but died in a fire, twenty years after the death of her husband, Zeke Buhlman. Robert himself died in 1916. Ida and Pearl continued to live at the house until Pearl 's marriage in the early 1920s, at which point it was rented. Ida and Pearl sold it in 1937 to Beaumont Savings and Loan, who sold it in 1947 to Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Monroe for a boarding house. By 1977, the house was decayed and the neighborhood was experiencing commercial redevelopment. A late-Victorian home next-door was leveled for a parking lot, and a partnership called GHW Corporation planned to do the same to the Sanders house. However, the Beaumont Heritage Society moved to save it. The BHS bought a vacant lot next to the Sanders house and traded it to GHW, which was thereby relieved of the trouble of tearing it down. The BHS secured a National Register listing for the Sanders house in 1978 and used $35,300 from a Community Development Block Grant to shore up the foundation and install a new roof. Eventually, the BHS located buyers Alan and Barbara Gordon McNeill, preservation enthusiasts who had the means and will to restore it. Alan is an attorney, and Barbara has a nursing degree. The McNeills have restored three 19 th -century buildings, including two on the National Register, and a bed-and-breakfast cottage on Bolivar Peninsula called The Breakers (1884). They also have ranching interests and a forty-acre pecan grove.

RESTORATION: The initial study of what needed to be done to the house was carried out in 1978 by David Hoffman of Bell , Klein & Hoffman, Architects and Restoration Consultants, Austin , Texas . The Beaumont Historical Society exchanged a vacant lot for the house, and repaired the foundation and roof. An article by Alan and Barbara McNeill for the Beaumont Enterprise [Jan. 26, 1983] gives the names of people who carried out their restoration work. The McNeills' ability to hire it done made this a considerably less stressful project than many restorers have. Two men ripped out non-original additions, and four men worked on the woodwork and stained glass. A crew of eight used scaffolds to renovate the exterior, and two carpenters replaced or repaired the missing structural and decorative elements. An electrician came face to face with a snake while working 35 feet above the ground! (Afterwards, there was said to be very little left of the snake). Another worker got struck by lightning while on a scaffold 40 feet from the ground, but escaped injury. A craftsman named Oleo Stockton made replacement parts for the porch, and another crew hung wallpaper, which was a particularly challenging task in the tower room. The McNeills have recovered items that were original to the house, and they keep things found on the grounds as exhibits. Sanders' niece told the McNeills about the home's former appearance. Every effort has been made to give the house an authentic restoration. Beaumont has lost so much of its historical architecture, the people of the city are very grateful to the McNeills for saving this landmark.