Hicks-Gregg House
Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Merchant and Brownsville native Frederick Hicks and his second wife, social worker Zuleika Banton Blackshear of Dublin, Texas, built this house circa 1909. Three years later they sold the house to Harry and Nellie Moler, who lived here eight years. In 1920, banker and civic leader John Gregg and his wife Lily bought the property. The Hicks-Gregg House is an example of the American Foursquare design, a symmetrical type of the Prairie style. Prominent features of the frame residence include its hipped roof, dormer window, exposed rafter ends, full-length three-bay porch, Tuscan columns and bay window. The Greggs added a complementary sunroom addition during their ownership. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2007
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Merchant Frederick Hicks and his wife Zuleika, a social worker, built this house in Brownsville around 1909, selling it a few years later to the Moler family and, in 1920, to banker and civic leader John Gregg. A fine example of the American Foursquare—a symmetrical descendant of the Prairie style—it features a hipped roof, dormer, deep porch with Tuscan columns, and a bay window, with a sunroom the Greggs later added. It stands as a well-preserved emblem of early-twentieth-century domestic architecture on the Texas border.
Why it matters
The Hicks-Gregg House shows how national architectural fashions took root even in far South Texas, and how a single home traced the town's merchant and banking elite across generations.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Frederick Hicks
- · Zuleika Banton Blackshear
- · John Gregg
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hicks-Lawrence House
Brownsville, TX
Built about 1908, this Queen Anne house was among the first in West Brownsville, the town's earliest subdivision beyond the original townsite. Livery-stable owners Edgar and Goldye Hicks raised it as a country home; in 1922 it passed to Dr. O.V. Lawrence, a civic leader, school board and junior college president, and regional pioneer of X-ray technology. The September 1933 hurricane destroyed the property's outbuildings.
Brulay House
Brownsville, TX
In 1925 Louis and Inez Brulay hired prominent Brownsville architect E. Guy Holliday to design this Spanish-Mediterranean home in the city's first suburb, complete with curved archways, white textured stucco, and a red terracotta roof. Louis was the son of George Brulay, a French immigrant whose Brulay Sugar Plantation outside the city was among the region's early agricultural ventures.
McNair House
Brownsville, TX
Brownsville architect A.H. Woolridge designed this Monterey-style home in 1937 for Jack and Vivian McNair. Jack had come to Brownsville in 1921 to join his brother in clothing manufacturing, eventually building McNair Clothing Manufacturing Company into the largest private employer south of San Antonio before selling to Levi Strauss in 1972. The house remains a fine local example of the Monterey style, with its second-story balcony, shuttered windows, and low-pitched roof.
Pitt House
Brownsville, TX
English immigrant Arthur Pitt arrived in Galveston in 1909, found work at a citrus nursery, and by 1918 had founded a Rio Grande Valley citrus-tree business he would run for sixty years. In 1930 he and his wife, Evelyn Roper Pitt, commissioned architect E. Guy Holliday—who had worked with El Paso's Trost & Trost—to design this Spanish Revival home, whose custom tilework and cross-patterned foyer window nodded to Pitt's British heritage.