Allen House
Marlin, Falls County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in 1911 as a residence for the family of Dr. Walter and Netti (Falconer) Allen, this Greek Revival style house features a giant entablature supported by paired massive Ionic columns. The house was occupied by members of the Allen family until 1956. The following year after Nettie Allen's death, her sister-in-law Hazel Bennett Falconer donated the house for use as a community and social center. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1991
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1911 for Dr. Walter and Nettie Allen, this Marlin residence showcases Greek Revival grandeur, its giant entablature carried on paired Ionic columns. The Allen family lived here until 1956, and after Nettie's death a relative gave the house to the community as a social center. It remains a stately reminder of early 20th-century Falls County.
Why it matters
The home reflects how prosperous families invested in classical architecture and later gave such landmarks new life as gathering places at the heart of small-town Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Walter Allen
- · Nettie Falconer Allen
- · Hazel Bennett Falconer
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church of Marlin
Marlin, TX
Methodism reached this stretch of the Brazos before Falls County or the town of Marlin even existed, carried by circuit-riding preachers beginning with the Rev. John W. DeVilbiss in 1842. A full-time pastor arrived in 1874, and by 1910 the congregation had raised a brick sanctuary of local Brazos River red clay, its windows imported from Italy. The church became a hub of mission work—one member, Maggie Rogers, served as a missionary in China for nearly four decades.
Silvia King
Reagan, TX
Silvia King was already a married mother in Morocco when slave traders kidnapped her, carried her to France, and forced her through the Middle Passage to New Orleans. Sold at auction and marched hundreds of miles to a Texas cotton plantation near La Grange, she was placed in a forced marriage and made to cook and weave for her enslaver. In 1937 the WPA's Federal Writers' Project recorded her extensive oral history in Marlin, capturing rare firsthand testimony of slavery and acts of resistance such as the ring shout—she died that same year, reportedly at the astonishing age of 133.
Hallie Earle, M.D.
Waco, TX
Harriet "Hallie" Earle was born on her family's ranch near Waco and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Baylor University before taking a medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine. In 1907 she became the first licensed female physician in McLennan County, running her own Waco practice from 1915 to 1948. In retirement she turned to farming and served as a weather observer for the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Oakwood Cemetery
Waco, TX
Before it became a cemetery in 1878, this Waco tract held a fairgrounds and a racetrack; afterward it grew into a 157-acre resting place that received reburials from the city's older graveyards. Uniquely, its association has long been governed by a board of directors made up entirely of women, as its founding by-laws required. Among those interred are three Texas governors, the pioneer for whom McLennan County is named, and a crusading editor shot dead in 1898 over his caustic pen.