Jester-Butler House
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
An excellent and elegant example of colonial revival design by an architect well-trained in detail and proportions, the home of rancher and banker Charles Jester and his wife Marion was completed in 1920. It was designed by Birch D. Easterwood (1885-1969), who was a favorite architect for major buildings on the Baylor University Campus including Pat Neff Hall. The Jester home, sold to oilman Joe E. Butler and his wife Ora in 1932, displays several elements typical of Easterwood, such as the slate roof, wide woodwork under the roof line, and deep red brick. The Butlers owned the home until 1979. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1997
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Completed in 1920 for rancher and banker Charles Jester and his wife Marion, this Colonial Revival home was designed by architect Birch D. Easterwood, whose work also graced the Baylor University campus. Its slate roof, wide woodwork, and deep red brick are hallmarks of his refined sense of detail and proportion. Sold to oilman Joe E. Butler in 1932, the house remained in his family until 1979.
Why it matters
The house captures the prosperity that oil, ranching, and banking brought to early-20th-century Texas, expressed through the era's fashionable revival architecture.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1920, Corsicana was riding a wave of Texas prosperity. Ranching and banking had long anchored the local economy, and oil had transformed the region's fortunes—Corsicana was famous as an early Texas oil town. That money wanted expression, and one of the ways prosperous families spoke it was through architecture.
The fashionable style of the moment was Colonial Revival, a nationwide taste for the balanced proportions, refined detail, and dignified symmetry that Americans associated with the country's founding era. A well-trained architect could turn a family's success into a house that looked both grand and reassuringly rooted.
This was the Progressive and early modern era, when a new and confident American middle and upper class built homes that announced arrival—and when a talented regional architect could leave his signature across campuses, downtowns, and the finest residential streets of a growing state.
People & events
The house was completed in 1920 for Charles Jester, a rancher and banker, and his wife Marion—a home meant to reflect the standing of a family at the top of Corsicana's economy. Its designer was architect Birch D. Easterwood, a man well trained in the details and proportions that make Colonial Revival design succeed.
Easterwood was no local unknown. He was a favored architect for major buildings on the Baylor University campus, including its prominent Pat Neff Hall—so the same hand that shaped landmark college buildings also shaped this Corsicana home. His trademarks show here: a slate roof, wide woodwork tucked under the roofline, and deep red brick.
In 1932 the house changed hands and character with the times, sold to oilman Joe E. Butler and his wife Ora. The Butlers held it until 1979, and the double name it carries today—Jester-Butler—records both the ranching-and-banking family who built it and the oil family who made it home for nearly half a century.
Its place in the American story
This house is a small monument to the forces that built modern Texas: cattle, banks, and oil, translated into brick and slate. The transfer from a rancher-banker to an oilman in 1932 is a tidy emblem of how wealth and power shifted across the early twentieth-century Southwest.
Its style ties Corsicana to a national story. Colonial Revival swept across the whole country in these decades, as Americans everywhere reached for the founding era's symmetry and calm to express success and stability. A fine example on a Texas street is a local verse of a national song.
And the architect's reach—from a landmark university hall to a private home—shows how a single talented designer could stitch a region's public and private landmarks into one recognizable body of work, the kind of legacy that earns a house its place on the historic register.
If you visit
This is a house to read like a signature. The marker points you to Easterwood's hallmarks—the slate roof, the wide woodwork under the eaves, the deep red brick—so let your eye trace those details and appreciate the proportions a well-trained architect labored over.
Notice the balance and symmetry that define Colonial Revival: the calm, orderly face a home like this presents to the street. Then imagine the two families it sheltered—a rancher-banker who built it, an oilman who lived in it for decades—and the Texas prosperity that paid for every slate tile.
As a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, it's a residence rather than a public site, so admire it from the street and give it its due. It's a rewarding stop on an architectural tour of Corsicana, where the town's oil-and-ranching wealth still stands in brick and stone.
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
- · Charles Jester
- · Joe E. Butler
- · Birch D. Easterwood
Themes & tags
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