Dr. A. H. A. and Ruby Jones House
Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ruby Lee Williams (1900-1979) was born in Texarkana to George and Carrie Williams. In 1928, she wed Jamaica-born Austin Hervin Archibald Jones (1901-1962), a successful dentist with a degree from Howard University. Ruby designed this bungalow-style home, utilizing African American craftsmen to build it in 1938. The home features decorative brickwork and a unique cubical tower. The Jones family often opened its home to touring African American entertainers, including Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ruby Lee Williams, born in Texarkana in 1900, married Jamaican-born dentist Austin Hervin Archibald Jones, a Howard University graduate, in 1928. A decade later Ruby designed this distinctive bungalow—crowned by a cubical tower and decorative brickwork—and had it built by African American craftsmen. The Jones home became a haven for touring Black entertainers barred from segregated hotels, welcoming guests such as Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington.
Why it matters
The house is a testament to Black professional achievement and to the private hospitality networks that sheltered African American artists traveling through the Jim Crow South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Texarkana in the 1930s sat on the Texas–Arkansas line in a Deep South still governed by Jim Crow. Segregation shaped nearly everything — where a family could live, learn, eat, and stay the night — and it pressed hardest on the Black professionals and artists who, for all their accomplishment, were still barred from white hotels, restaurants, and neighborhoods.
Yet within those constraints, African American communities built a vibrant middle class of doctors, dentists, teachers, and business owners. A Black professional's home was often more than a residence; it was a statement of achievement and a gathering place, standing as proof of what talent and determination could build even under the era's cruel limits.
This was also the golden age of touring Black musicians, who crossed the country by car and rail playing for eager audiences. Their fame did not buy them a room at just any inn, so they depended on a private web of welcoming homes — a hospitality born of necessity and pride.
People & events
At the center of this house are Ruby Lee Williams and Austin Hervin Archibald Jones. Ruby was born in Texarkana in 1900 to George and Carrie Williams, a daughter of the community she would one day help define. In 1928 she married Austin Jones — born in Jamaica in 1901 and trained as a dentist at Howard University, one of the nation's premier Black institutions of higher learning.
Ruby was not merely the mistress of this home; she designed it. In 1938 she brought her vision to life, employing African American craftsmen to build a bungalow marked by decorative brickwork and a distinctive cubical tower — a personal design that announced both taste and confidence.
And the Joneses opened their doors. Touring Black entertainers who could not check into segregated hotels found welcome here, among them figures as celebrated as Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington. The house became a waypoint on the long road these artists traveled, a place of rest and warm company between performances.
Its place in the American story
The Dr. A. H. A. and Ruby Jones House speaks to two great American themes at once. The first is Black professional achievement: a Howard-trained dentist and a woman who designed her own home embody the striving, educated middle class that flourished within segregated communities and built institutions that endured.
The second is the hidden geography of hospitality that sustained African American life under Jim Crow. Because national fame offered no protection from a whites-only front desk, even celebrated performers relied on private homes for shelter and dignity. Homes like this one formed an informal network — kin to the better-known travel guides of the era — that let Black Americans move through a hostile landscape with grace.
That a house in Texarkana could host artists whose music helped define the American century is a quiet reminder of how much of the nation's cultural life passed through spaces that history books rarely name.
If you visit
Come to appreciate a home shaped by the hand of the woman who imagined it. Ruby Jones's 1938 bungalow rewards a close look: study the decorative brickwork and, above all, the unusual cubical tower that gives the house its unmistakable silhouette. It was built by African American craftsmen, so you are looking at community skill as well as personal vision.
Stand on the street and picture the evenings this house knew — the arrival of touring musicians who had nowhere else in town they were permitted to stay, and the warmth that met them at the door. The walls that sheltered guests like Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington still frame that memory.
On a road trip through Texarkana and the wider Ark-La-Tex, the Jones House makes a natural stop for anyone tracing African American history and music. It is a modest building with an outsized story, best appreciated slowly, with an ear for the era's great voices and an eye for the pride built into every brick.
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
- · Ruby Lee Williams
- · Austin Hervin Archibald Jones
- · Louis Armstrong
- · Dinah Washington
Themes & tags
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