Mildred Buildings
Beaumont, Jefferson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Constructed in 1929-1930 for $700,000, this complex was built by Miles Frank Yount and named for his daughter. Yount was a founder and partner in the Yount-Lee Oil Company, which made its fortune in the second Spindletop Oil Boom in 1925. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the complex includes an apartment building, commercial-retail building, and garage. The core of the complex is the three-story apartment building, featuring terra cotta glazed brick, projecting bays, hipped-roof porches, parapet walls, and a red tile roof. It is a fine example of the Mediterranean revival style in Texas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1929–1930 at a cost of $700,000, this complex was the work of Miles Frank Yount, a founder of the Yount-Lee Oil Company that struck it rich in the second Spindletop boom of 1925, who named it for his daughter. The centerpiece is a three-story apartment building of terra cotta glazed brick with projecting bays, hipped-roof porches, and a red tile roof—a fine Texas example of the Mediterranean Revival style. The grouping also includes a commercial-retail building and garage.
Why it matters
The Mildred Buildings are a stylish monument to the second Spindletop boom, showing how oil fortunes financed the ambitious urban architecture of Jazz Age Beaumont.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Miles Frank Yount
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Holmes Duke House
Beaumont, TX
Holmes Duke, a Carthage native, bought this Beaumont lot in 1898 and finished his Queen Anne and Colonial Revival home the next year, distinguished by twin semicircular bays, a sunburst-decorated gable, and fish-scale shingling. Duke was a busy figure in the growing city — inventor, restaurateur, hotel builder, city alderman, and health inspector — and he lived here until his death in 1946. The house is one of the few Beaumont structures that predate the 1901 Spindletop oil gusher.
McFaddin-Ward House
Beaumont, TX
This classical revival mansion rose in 1906 on the homestead of William McFaddin, who had received land from the Republic of Texas for his service at the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto and went on to build a sprawling ranching empire. Architect Henry Conrad Mauer designed the house for McFaddin's daughter, and it passed down through the family for generations. It stands amid the wealth generated by Southeast Texas ranching and the oil that gushed from nearby Spindletop.
Young Men's Christian Association of Beaumont
Beaumont, TX
The 1901 Spindletop gusher turned Beaumont into a boomtown flooded with newcomers, vice, and a housing shortage. That November a young man living in a backyard tent and a visiting state YMCA secretary rallied a community meeting, and 35 founding members organized the Beaumont YMCA under president George W. Carroll. By 1903 it opened a building with dormitories, an 800-seat auditorium, bowling alley, and pool, and later leaders raised funds for a modern facility, seated the nation's first Jewish YMCA board member, and—in the segregated era—provided a separate building for Black residents.
Texas' First Rice Mill
Beaumont, TX
Along the Gulf prairie of Southeast Texas, early rice growers depended so entirely on rainfall that their crop earned the wry name "Providence Rice." J. E. Broussard changed that: a pioneer grower and irrigator, he founded the Beaumont Rice Mill in 1892 and helped organize the Rice Millers' Association, spurring mills across neighboring counties. The present mill building went up in 1907, and Broussard's descendants have kept the firm running ever since.