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.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Alfred Sutton Bloor
- · Martha Wainwright Bloor
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of Manor
Manor, TX
This town grew from land first settled by James Manor, who came to Texas with Sam Houston in 1832 and returned with his family to a country still subject to Indian raids into the 1850s. Alongside a roll call of pioneer families, the settlement soon boasted a boys' school, a Methodist church, and the celebrated Parsons Female Academy, whose students included a future lieutenant governor and a dean of the University of Texas law school. When Manor donated right-of-way for the Houston & Texas Central Railroad in 1871, the town platted and named for him the next year was assured its future.
Lockwood Cemetery
Manor, TX
This cemetery lies on land settled in 1833 by Gordon C. Jennings and his family, who came from Missouri as part of Stephen F. Austin's "Little Colony." Gordon became the oldest defender to die at the Alamo in 1836, while his young daughter Catherine earned lasting local fame for riding to warn neighbors as the Mexican army advanced during the Runaway Scrape. Catherine later married Sylvester Lockwood, and their descendants still tend the graves of these Texas pioneers.
Dessau Cemetery
Austin, TX
Established around 1874 in what is now northeast Austin, Dessau Cemetery served a farming community settled in the years after the Civil War, when German and other families worked the blackland prairie of Travis County. Its designation as a Historic Texas Cemetery preserves it as a record of that early rural settlement.
Manda
Manor, TX
Swedish immigrants founded Manda in the 1880s, naming it for Amanda Bengtson Gustafson, sister of the town's postmaster. Within a decade it was a working farm community with a cotton gin, general store, and blacksmith shop, its social life anchored by a Swedish Methodist congregation organized in 1892 and a Lutheran chapel built in 1896. As rural schools consolidated and congregations dispersed, Manda faded, leaving its cemetery and repurposed schoolhouse as reminders.