Ashcroft House
Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Charles Franklin (1880-1946) and Ruth (Lynch) Ashcroft (1895-1979) were civic and social Leaders in Sulphur Springs. Charles’ father, B. F. Ashcroft, started the city’s first electric company, later sold by his estate to Texas Power & Light. Charles was also director and vice-president of the Sulphur Springs State Bank, co-owner (with H.C. McGrede) of the local Coca-Cola Bottling Company, and president of the school board. The couple had one son. In 1938, they commissioned prominent Tyler architect Shirley Simons, Sr. to design a home on College Street three blocks east of the square. Simons (1897-1963) designed many significant residences and commercial and public buildings in Tyler, Lufkin and other Texas cities. The College Street parcel was previously the site of the house of druggist Ben W. Smith, built before the Civil War and described as the oldest house in the city when it was razed in the 1930s. Lumber and brick were salvaged to build several houses in Sulphur Springs. A surviving letter from Charles to his sister, Ina, pinpoints the completion of the house, as it records the family moving in on Dec. 23, 1939. Prominent features of the two-story Colonial Revival style house include its full-width front portico supported by six ionic columns, white painted brick veneer, balcony over the front double doors, and east and west extensions with corner quoins. First floor windows have intricate cornices, while those on the extensions are topped by sunburst pediments. The slate roof is pierced by brick chimneys and a central cupola with weathervane. The only modifications have been the enclosure of a sun porch and an additional room added in the 1960s. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark – 2017
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Charles and Ruth Ashcroft were civic and social leaders in Sulphur Springs — Charles a bank vice-president, Coca-Cola bottling co-owner, and school-board president whose father had founded the city's first electric company. In 1938 they hired noted Tyler architect Shirley Simons to design this two-story Colonial Revival home, built on the site of the city's reputedly oldest house and finished in December 1939, its full-width portico of six Ionic columns and slate-roofed cupola largely unchanged since.
Why it matters
The Ashcroft House shows how a small Texas town's business leaders expressed their prosperity through architect-designed homes that became local landmarks.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Ashcroft House belongs to the confident, optimistic years of a small Texas town coming into its own. Sulphur Springs, the seat of Hopkins County, was the kind of Progressive Era community where a handful of families in banking, utilities, and bottling shaped the life of the whole place. Charles Franklin Ashcroft and his wife Ruth were among those leaders — figures whose influence ran through the bank, the school board, and the local businesses that kept the town humming.
The house was built at the very end of the 1930s, as the country was climbing out of the Great Depression and a prosperous family could once again think about building something grand and permanent. It rose on College Street, just a few blocks east of the courthouse square, in a neighborhood where a fine home was a public statement as much as a private comfort.
It also rose on layered ground. The parcel had held the home of a druggist named Ben W. Smith, a house built before the Civil War and remembered as the oldest in the city when it came down in the 1930s — its lumber and brick salvaged into several other Sulphur Springs houses. New prosperity was quite literally building atop the town's oldest memory.
People & events
The people here are a portrait of small-town civic leadership. Charles, born in 1880, sat as director and vice-president of the Sulphur Springs State Bank, co-owned the local Coca-Cola bottling operation, and served as president of the school board — while the family's roots in the town ran back to his father, B. F. Ashcroft, who had started the city's first electric company before it passed, through his estate, to Texas Power and Light. Ruth, born in 1895, shared in that civic and social standing. Together they raised one son.
In 1938 the couple hired Shirley Simons, Sr., a prominent Tyler architect whose reputation was built on distinguished homes and public buildings across a number of Texas cities. What Simons gave them was a two-story Colonial Revival house with a full-width front portico carried on six Ionic columns, white-painted brick, a balcony over the double front doors, and side extensions dressed with corner quoins. The first-floor windows wear intricate cornices; the extension windows are crowned with sunburst pediments; a slate roof rises to brick chimneys and a central cupola with a weathervane.
The most human detail survives in ink. A letter Charles wrote to his sister, Ina, fixes the moment the house became a home: the family moved in on December 23, 1939 — just in time for Christmas in their new rooms.
Its place in the American story
The Ashcroft House captures a pattern repeated in prosperous small towns all across America: local business leaders expressing their success through architect-designed homes that became neighborhood landmarks. The specific style is telling. Colonial Revival surged in popularity in the 1930s, its columns and symmetry evoking an idealized early-American past — a national taste for tradition and stability that felt especially reassuring at the tail end of the Depression.
The choice to commission a named architect from a nearby city, rather than build from a pattern book, is itself part of the story. It marks the moment a family and a town could afford design as well as shelter, and it links a place like Sulphur Springs to the broader professionalization of American architecture in the early twentieth century.
Even the ground it stands on tells a national tale — the older home dismantled and its materials recycled into other houses. Long before it was a modern virtue, that kind of thrift was simply how growing towns reused what they had, letting one generation's oldest house become the raw material for the next.
If you visit
This is a house to admire from the street, so let your eye do the walking. Look first for the six Ionic columns marching across the full-width portico, then work up to the balcony over the double front doors, the corner quoins on the side extensions, and the sunburst pediments over the extension windows. Finish at the roofline: slate, brick chimneys, and that central cupola with its weathervane.
Part of the pleasure here is how little has changed. Aside from an enclosed sun porch and a room added in the 1960s, the house looks much as it did when the Ashcrofts carried their belongings inside on that December day in 1939 — a rare chance to see a Colonial Revival design essentially as its architect intended.
It makes a rewarding stop on a stroll through Sulphur Springs' historic neighborhoods, easily paired with the courthouse square a few blocks west. As with any private residence marked as a landmark, admire it respectfully from public sidewalks and imagine the family reading a letter to sister Ina, counting the days until they could move in before Christmas.
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
- · Charles Franklin Ashcroft
- · Ruth Lynch Ashcroft
- · Shirley Simons, Sr.
Themes & tags
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