Dr. E. L. and Nannie Lewis Walker House
Gladewater, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Edgar Lathgro Walker of Tennessee wed Nannie E. Lewis, a native of Kentucky, in 1891. The couple later brought their two young daughters, Lena and Alma, to Gladewater to visit E.L.'s brother, William, and they decided to stay. Their third daughter, Bessie, was born in Gladewater in 1898. E.L., a graduate of the Cincinnati School of Medicine, opened a medical practice and drugstore. He purchased this site from W.S. and Sara Austin on October 23, 1895, and he and Nannie completed their new home sometime before 1910. Their property eventually extended all the way to the Sabine River and included several barns, a cookhouse, oil wells and derricks, and oil storage tanks. The Walker House, with its main body constructed of concrete blocks, is Neoclassical in design, with a symmetrical façade, pronounced two-story portico, Ionic columns, five-bay front and pedimented dormer window. The three-story structure also has two concrete basements. Initially intended for use as an infirmary, the third floor space served as an attic with access to a rooftop widow's walk. Original features included ten fireplaces, a two-floor elevator and fifteen rooms. A concrete balustrade, too heavy for use on the second-floor porch, became a unique fence. Changes over the years included additional rooms and the removal of the elevator, donated to a World War II scrap metal drive. Following the deaths of her parents, Bessie (Walker) and husband Otto Staerker lived in the house, which stayed in the family until 1969. Subsequent owners have ensured the house remains a landmark, a link to the Walker family and early Gladewater. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the boom-era piney woods of East Texas, physician Edgar L. Walker and his wife Nannie put down roots in Gladewater in the 1890s, opening a medical practice and drugstore. Around 1910 they completed this ambitious three-story Neoclassical residence of concrete block, crowned by a two-story Ionic portico and a rooftop widow's walk, and originally meant to double as an infirmary. As oil derricks and storage tanks spread across their land toward the Sabine River, the house became a local landmark—and even surrendered its elevator to a World War II scrap drive.
Why it matters
The Walker House ties one family's story to the transformation of East Texas from a farming frontier into an oil-boom country, where a country doctor could become a landowner among the derricks.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the piney woods of East Texas were still frontier-flavored country — timber, farms, and small towns strung along the rail lines. Gladewater, in Gregg County, was one of those young towns, the kind of place where an ambitious newcomer could arrive, hang out a shingle, and help build a community more or less from scratch. When Edgar and Nannie Walker chose to stay, they were casting their lot with a settlement still finding its shape.
The great transformation was still to come. East Texas sat atop one of the richest oil deposits in the country, and in the early twentieth century the discovery of that oil would turn quiet farm country into boomtown territory almost overnight, with derricks sprouting across land that had lately grown cotton and corn.
The Walker house, completed sometime before 1910 and later ringed by the family's own wells and storage tanks, stands at the seam between those two worlds — the settled professional life of a country doctor and the roaring industrial future rising up around him.
People & events
Edgar Lathgro Walker, born in Tennessee, married Nannie E. Lewis of Kentucky in 1891. The couple came to Gladewater to visit E.L.'s brother William and, as families sometimes do, simply decided to stay. Their two eldest daughters, Lena and Alma, came with them; a third, Bessie, was born in Gladewater in 1898.
E.L. had trained at the Cincinnati School of Medicine, and in Gladewater he put that education to work, opening both a medical practice and a drugstore. In 1895 he bought this site, and over the following years he and Nannie raised an ambitious home on it — a three-story concrete-block house in the Neoclassical style, with a two-story portico carried on Ionic columns, a five-bay front, a pedimented dormer, and a rooftop widow's walk. The top floor was first meant to serve as an infirmary; the house held fifteen rooms, ten fireplaces, and even a two-floor elevator, with two concrete basements below.
The details tell of a family that improvised as grandly as it built: a concrete balustrade too heavy for the second-floor porch was repurposed into a distinctive fence. In time the property stretched all the way to the Sabine River and took in barns, a cookhouse, and the oil wells, derricks, and storage tanks of a changed economy. After E.L. and Nannie died, their daughter Bessie and her husband, Otto Staerker, lived in the house, which stayed in the family until 1969.
Its place in the American story
The Walker House is a vivid emblem of how oil rewrote the map of the American South. In a single generation, a family's fortunes could pass from the frontier professions — doctoring, shopkeeping — into landownership among the derricks, and the architecture of a home could grow to match those rising ambitions.
The house also captures a distinctly American habit of building aspiration into brick and concrete. Its Neoclassical dress — the columns, the symmetrical façade, the portico — borrowed the vocabulary of the nation's civic and plantation architecture and set it down in a young East Texas town, a statement that Gladewater had arrived.
Even the losses recorded here belong to a larger story. When the elevator was pulled out and donated to a World War II scrap-metal drive, this one household joined millions of Americans who fed the war effort with the metal of their daily lives — a private house quietly enlisted in a national mobilization.
If you visit
Approach the Walker House expecting a landmark that announces itself. The two-story portico and its Ionic columns give the front a formal, almost civic dignity, and the eye is meant to travel upward — past the five-bay façade and the pedimented dormer to the widow's walk perched on the roof.
Look closely and the house rewards you with its oddities and its history. The main body is concrete block, unusual and sturdy; somewhere along the fence line runs that balustrade too heavy for the porch it was made for, repurposed rather than discarded. Picture the top floor as the infirmary it was first intended to be, and the vanished elevator that once climbed two of the three stories before it went to a wartime scrap drive.
The house sits in Gladewater, deep in the East Texas oil country, and makes a fitting stop on a drive through a region where farms gave way to derricks. Stand back far enough to take in the whole three-story silhouette, and imagine the land that once ran with this property all the way to the Sabine River — a country doctor's home grown into a monument to a boom.
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
- · Edgar Lathgro Walker
- · Nannie E. Lewis Walker
- · Bessie Walker Staerker
Themes & tags
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