"Ace of Clubs" House
Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Has 3 groups of octagonal rooms (leaves of a club) opening on a rotunda backed by long rectangular rooms (the Club's stem). Rotunda has a marble mantel, French mirrors and spiral stairway and is topped with 20-foot tower. Built 1884 by J. H. Draughan. Owned since 1894 by Henry Moore family. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1884 by J. H. Draughan, the "Ace of Clubs" House takes its playful name from its floor plan: three groups of octagonal rooms — the leaves of a club — open onto a central rotunda, with rectangular rooms forming the club's stem. The rotunda rises into a twenty-foot tower and is finished with a marble mantel, French mirrors, and a spiral stair. The Henry Moore family made it their home from 1894 onward.
Why it matters
This whimsical, card-suit floor plan makes the house one of the most distinctive surviving examples of Gilded Age domestic architecture in East Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Texarkana in the 1880s was a young, fast-growing railroad town. It had grown up where rail lines met at the Texas–Arkansas border, and its name blends Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Lumber, cotton, and rail traffic were bringing people and money to this corner of East Texas.
The Gilded Age was also a time of bold, eccentric domestic architecture. Victorian builders loved towers, turrets, bay windows, and unusual floor plans. A newly prosperous merchant or businessman could announce his arrival with a house that looked like nothing else in town. Pattern books and the new rail lines carried fashionable ideas and fine materials to places that, a generation earlier, had been frontier.
Octagonal buildings had a particular vogue in nineteenth-century America. Eight-sided rooms and houses were promoted as healthier, brighter, and more efficient. Still, very few builders took the idea as far as the man who built this one.
People & events
J. H. Draughan built the house in 1884 around a striking idea: the shape of the club from a deck of playing cards. Three groups of octagonal rooms form the club's rounded leaves, all opening onto a central rotunda. Behind them, long rectangular rooms make up the stem. Seen from above, the plan really is the ace of clubs.
The rotunda is the heart of the house. It holds a marble mantel, French mirrors, and a spiral stairway, and it rises into a tower about twenty feet tall. It is easy to imagine visitors in the 1880s stepping into that central space and realizing how unusual this home was.
A popular local legend says the house was paid for with poker winnings from a hand won with the ace of clubs. It is a good story, but it is a story; the marker says nothing of it. What is documented is the long family stewardship that followed. From 1894 the house belonged to the Henry Moore family, who kept it for generations, and that continuity helped it survive into the modern era.
Its place in the American story
The Ace of Clubs House is a vivid example of how inventive American domestic architecture could be in the Gilded Age. The era's builders treated a house as a statement of personality, and few statements are as memorable as a floor plan shaped like a playing card.
It also tells the story of the railroad towns that sprang up across the South and West after the Civil War. Places like Texarkana did not exist before the tracks arrived. Within a decade or two they had citizens wealthy and confident enough to build homes like this one, showing how quickly rail connections could turn a crossroads into a city.
Its 1964 designation as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark came early in the modern historic preservation movement. It reflects a growing recognition that ordinary towns held architectural treasures worth protecting.
If you visit
Look first at the overall shape. The octagonal wings that make up the leaves of the club are easiest to understand once you picture the plan from above. Then find the tower rising over the central rotunda, the feature that ties the whole design together.
The house is associated with Texarkana's local museum efforts and has been interpreted for visitors. Check current information before you go rather than assuming access. If you can go inside, pay attention to the rotunda's spiral stair, mantel, and mirrors, which the marker singles out.
Texarkana makes a fun stop on any drive along the Texas–Arkansas line. The city famously straddles two states, and the Ace of Clubs House pairs well with a stroll through the town's historic downtown and railroad-era buildings.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · J. H. Draughan
- · Henry Moore
Themes & tags
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