Arnett House
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First built as a wedding gift for J. Lanham and Glenn (Pratt) Higginbotham in 1915, the Arnett House became the longtime home of the family of Alice (Ford) and Sam C. Arnett, pioneer rancher and banker. For decades, Arnett served as a major businessman and leader in the development of Lubbock. In 1956, Arnett passed away, and his son, Dr. Sam C. Arnett Jr., and his wife, Olga, donated the house to Lubbock Christian College (later Lubbock Christian University, or LCU). The house was moved to the campus to serve as its first Administration Building. The house fulfilled various functions until 1975, when it was given to the Associates of Lubbock Christian College, a women's organization dedicated to support and fundraising for the college. The Craftsman style bungalow was designed by Fort Worth architect M. L. Waller, who designed other buildings in Lubbock and also the Crosby County Courthouse. The Arnett house is one of the few early 20th century residences of Lubbock still standing today. In its original location it faced Avenue L just south of the Lubbock Sanitarium. Now on the LCU campus, the eight room, 1 1/2-story wood frame house features gabled and hip roof sections, wide porches and a low knee wall. The house was renovated in 1978-79 by C. R. Billingsley of Billingsley and Stracener, with Claude Martin and Sons as contractors. Lucille Melcher of Cagle Brothers Furniture oversaw the interior restoration. The Associates of Lubbock Christian University provided the funding for the entire project and continue to maintain the home and to use it for events supporting the university. This organization celebrated the 100th birthday of the house with several events in 2015. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -- 2015
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First raised in 1915 as a wedding gift, this Craftsman bungalow became the longtime home of pioneer rancher and banker Sam C. Arnett and his family, who helped build early Lubbock. After Arnett's death in 1956, his son donated the house to Lubbock Christian College, which moved it to campus to serve as its first administration building before it passed in 1975 to a women's support organization that maintains it still. Designed by Fort Worth architect M. L. Waller, it is one of the few early-20th-century residences left in Lubbock.
Why it matters
The house connects the ranching and banking pioneers who founded Lubbock to the institutions—especially higher education—that their generation's wealth later endowed.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When this house was raised in 1915, Lubbock was barely a town at all — a young settlement out on the Llano Estacado, the vast flat tableland of the Texas South Plains that had been open range only a generation before. This was frontier country in living memory, and the people building homes here were, quite literally, the first generation to make a permanent city where cattle and grass had lately been the whole economy.
The early twentieth century was the moment the South Plains turned from ranching toward farming and finance, and toward the institutions of a settled society. Fortunes first made in cattle were moving into banks, businesses, and civic life. A substantial family home from these years is therefore a rare and telling survivor: most of the buildings of that first town era are long gone, which is exactly why the marker stresses that this is one of the few early-twentieth-century residences of Lubbock still standing.
The house itself speaks the architectural language of its day. It is a Craftsman-style bungalow — a wood-frame, story-and-a-half design with wide porches, a low knee wall, and gabled and hipped roof sections — a style that swept America in these years as the sensible, comfortable, unpretentious home of the rising middle and professional classes.
People & events
The house began as a gift of celebration: it was built in 1915 as a wedding present for J. Lanham and Glenn (Pratt) Higginbotham. But its long life is bound up with the family whose name it now carries — Alice (Ford) and Sam C. Arnett. Sam Arnett was a pioneer rancher and banker, one of the businessmen the marker credits with the development of Lubbock itself, and for decades this was the Arnett family home.
When Sam Arnett died in 1956, the house began a second life that says as much about the family's values as its first. His son, Dr. Sam C. Arnett Jr., and Dr. Arnett's wife, Olga, donated the home to Lubbock Christian College. To make the gift useful, the house was physically moved to the campus, where it served as the young college's very first Administration Building — the founding fortunes of the town literally rolled over to shelter its new institutions.
The design work belonged to Fort Worth architect M. L. Waller, whose reach extended across the region; he also designed the Crosby County Courthouse and other Lubbock buildings. In 1975 the house passed to the Associates of Lubbock Christian College, a women's organization devoted to supporting and raising funds for the school. They oversaw a careful renovation in 1978–79 and, in 2015, celebrated the home's hundredth birthday — a century marked in the same year Texas recorded it as a Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
The Arnett House compresses a distinctly American arc into a single building: from open frontier, to ranching wealth, to banking and business, to the endowment of education — the classic path by which raw new country became settled society. That a rancher-banker's home became a college's first administration building is the story of that transformation made physical.
It also captures a pattern seen across the country in the twentieth century: private family wealth, once secured, flowing into the founding of the schools, colleges, and civic institutions that outlast any individual fortune. The generation that broke a frontier repeatedly turned its gains toward permanence, and higher education was one of the most enduring forms that impulse took.
There is a quieter national story here as well — the decades of unpaid, organized work by a women's association that maintained, restored, and kept the house useful. Behind a great many preserved American landmarks stand exactly such volunteer organizations, and this house survives in large part because of them.
If you visit
Look first at the house as a rare survivor. When you stand before this Craftsman bungalow, remember that it is one of the very few early-twentieth-century homes left in Lubbock — most of its contemporaries are gone, so its wide porches, low knee wall, and eight comfortable rooms are a direct window onto how the town's first families actually lived.
Keep in mind, too, that it is not on its original ground. It once faced Avenue L, just south of the old Lubbock Sanitarium, before it was moved to serve the college; picturing that journey is part of the fun, and a reminder that even buildings sometimes migrate to find a second purpose.
Today the house sits on the university campus, cared for by the organization that has looked after it for decades, and it still hosts events supporting the school. That gives a visit an unusually warm feeling — this is not a frozen relic but a living building. Fold it into a walk around the campus, and let it anchor the older, frontier-and-founding chapter of the city's story.
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
- · Sam C. Arnett
- · Alice Ford Arnett
- · J. Lanham Higginbotham
- · M. L. Waller
Themes & tags
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