Bloor House
Manor, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Local rancher and farmer Alfred Sutton Bloor (1850-1899) and his wife Martha (Wainwright) (1849-1928), natives of Pennsylvania, built this home in 1897-98. Constructed by the Elgin Press Brick Co., the house features characteristics of the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Outstanding features include the turreted corners and the massive portico. A landmark in the Manor community, the house remained in the ownership of the Bloor family until 1960. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1982
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Pennsylvania natives Alfred Sutton Bloor and his wife Martha raised this brick home in 1897–98 as they made their living ranching and farming the land around Manor. Built by the Elgin Press Brick Co. with turreted corners and a massive portico, the house blends Queen Anne exuberance with Colonial Revival restraint. For over sixty years it stood as a Bloor family landmark before passing from their hands in 1960.
Why it matters
The house reflects the prosperity of settled Texas farm country at the turn of the century, when established landowners traded log cabins for ornate brick homes that still mark their communities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Bloor House rose in 1897 and 1898, at the close of a century and the turn of an era in Texas. By then the frontier chapter of the region was well behind it, and the countryside around Manor had settled into established farm and ranch land. This was the Gilded Age giving way to the Progressive era — a time when a prosperous farming family could think not just about survival but about permanence and display.
That ambition shows in the very material of the house. It was built of pressed brick from the Elgin Press Brick Co., and Elgin, nearby, was known for its brickmaking. To build in brick rather than timber was a statement in itself: this was a home meant to outlast its builders.
The architecture belongs squarely to its moment. The late nineteenth century was the golden age of the elaborate Queen Anne style, all asymmetry and ornament, even as the more orderly, classically minded Colonial Revival was rising to challenge it. A house built in these exact years often speaks both languages at once.
People & events
The home was the work of Alfred Sutton Bloor, a local rancher and farmer who lived from 1850 to 1899, and his wife Martha, born Martha Wainwright, who lived from 1849 to 1928. Both were natives of Pennsylvania who had made their lives on the land around Manor, and the house they raised in 1897 and 1898 was the fruit of that work.
The design gathered the fashionable flourishes of the day. It shows the turreted corners that give a Queen Anne house its storybook silhouette, along with a massive portico that lends a note of grander, more formal dignity. The blend of exuberant towers and stately porch is exactly the marriage of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival taste that defined the finest homes of the 1890s.
The house long outlived the man who built it. Alfred died in 1899, only a year or so after its completion, but the home remained a landmark in the Manor community and stayed in the Bloor family's hands until 1960 — more than six decades under one family's name before it passed on.
Its place in the American story
An ornate brick house like this is a small chapter in a very large American story: what settled prosperity looked like once the pioneer generation had done its work. Across the country at the turn of the century, established landowners were trading the log cabins and plain frame houses of the frontier for substantial, decorated homes that announced they had arrived and intended to stay.
The styles themselves are a national language. The Queen Anne's towers and the Colonial Revival's classical portico appeared on fine homes from New England to Texas in these years, so a house like this ties one Texas farm family to a taste shared across the whole of Gilded Age America.
And there is the quiet dignity of continuity. That the Bloor family held the house from the 1890s into 1960 speaks to the way such landmark homes anchored their communities for generations, becoming shared points of memory long after the people who first lit their windows were gone.
If you visit
You will find the Bloor House in the Manor community, just east of Austin, and it is a treat for anyone who loves old architecture. Look first to the corners for the turrets, then to the front for that heavy portico — the two features the marker singles out, and the two that tell you the house is speaking both Queen Anne and Colonial Revival at once.
Take in the brick. Knowing it came from a nearby press works adds a local grounding to what could otherwise feel like pure showmanship; this was fashionable design built from the materials at hand.
A house like this deserves an admiring look from the street or public view; treat it with the courtesy you would give any place that may be a private home. It is a rewarding stop on an architectural driving tour of the area — a turn-of-the-century landmark that has watched over its community for well over a hundred years.
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
- · Alfred Sutton Bloor
- · Martha Wainwright Bloor
Themes & tags
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