Avery and Mary Turner House
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Avery and Mary (Ten Eyck) Turner moved here in 1902. Avery was an executive for the Santa Fe Railroad, his employer for 58 years. Mary helped organize the local American Red Cross chapter and was active with the Salvation Army and other groups. In 1910, the Turners built this home modeled after Mary’s parents’ home in New Jersey. The house stayed in the family until Mary’s death in 1951. One of Amarillo’s very few Dutch colonial revival homes, this two-story side gable brick house has a full-width porch with massive Tuscan columns and a large shed roof dormer. An original brick carriage house later became a guest cottage.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Avery Turner, a Santa Fe Railroad executive who spent fifty-eight years with the line, moved to Amarillo with his wife Mary in 1902. In 1910 the couple built this two-story Dutch colonial revival house—a rare style locally—modeled on Mary's family home in New Jersey, with a full-width porch, Tuscan columns, and a brick carriage house. Mary was active in the Red Cross and Salvation Army, and the home stayed in the family until her death in 1951.
Why it matters
The house reflects how railroad executives and their families brought Eastern tastes and civic institutions to the fast-growing towns of the West.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, Amarillo was a booming young city on the high plains, and much of its growth rode in on the railroad. The rails brought people, freight, and ambition, and the men who ran them were among the most powerful figures in any western town they touched.
This was the Progressive era, when growing cities filled in with substantial homes and civic institutions almost as fast as the population arrived. Families with means and connections often carried Eastern tastes westward, planting familiar styles of architecture and social life in new soil.
A home built in this setting in 1910 was more than shelter. It was a marker of permanence in a place still proving it would last, and a sign that a rough railhead was maturing into a settled community with its own gentility.
People & events
Avery and Mary Turner, whose maiden name was Ten Eyck, arrived here in 1902. Avery was an executive with the Santa Fe Railroad, a company he served for a remarkable fifty-eight years — a career that placed him among the men steering the line that helped build the region.
Mary made her mark in the life of the community. She helped organize the local chapter of the American Red Cross and was active with the Salvation Army and other groups, the kind of civic and charitable work that knit a young city together.
In 1910 the couple built this home, modeling it on the house of Mary's parents back in New Jersey — a way of bringing a piece of her family's world to the Texas plains. The home stayed in the family until Mary's death in 1951, holding their story in one place for more than four decades.
Its place in the American story
The Turner house tells a story that played out across the American West: as railroads pushed into new territory, the executives and families who came with them brought Eastern tastes and institutions along for the ride. A New Jersey family home, rebuilt in Amarillo, is that pattern made visible in brick.
Architecturally, it is a local rarity — one of Amarillo's very few Dutch colonial revival homes. The two-story, side-gabled brick house carries a full-width porch with massive Tuscan columns and a large shed-roof dormer, an Eastern and Mid-Atlantic style transplanted far from where it usually appeared.
Just as telling is Mary's civic work. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army were national organizations taking root in communities everywhere in this era, and her role in bringing them to Amarillo shows how railroad families helped seed not only architecture but the charitable institutions that defined American town life.
If you visit
Look first at the shape of the house. Its two-story, side-gabled brick form and full-width porch set it apart from its neighbors, and those heavy Tuscan columns and the broad shed-roof dormer are the details that give away its Dutch colonial revival character — a style you will rarely find elsewhere in the city.
Then let your eye wander to the grounds. An original brick carriage house, later turned into a guest cottage, is a small clue to how households of the early 1900s lived, when a fine home came with outbuildings to match.
As a stop on a tour of Amarillo's historic streets, this house rewards a slow look. Picture the family that built it modeling their home on a house in far-off New Jersey, and you will feel how the railroad era stitched the eastern and western halves of the country together, one household at a time.
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
- · Avery Turner
- · Mary Ten Eyck Turner
Themes & tags
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