Odem Building
Sinton, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Sinton townsite company was organized in 1894 to promote the development of the new railroad town of Sinton. Local merchant David Odem, one of the founders of the townsite company, established himself as a prominent landowner and businessman in Sinton. In 1906 he became one of the principal stockholders in the newly organized Sinton State Bank. This building was erected in 1909 as the Sinton State Bank Building. Closely associated with David Odem, the building became known locally as the Odem Building. Its architectural design exhibits Beaux Arts influences, and features an emphasis on symmetry, a focal corner entry with fine terra cotta details and cast stone door and window surrounds. Also of note are the two story arches over round-arched windows and terra cotta detailing on the top of the parapet. The Sinton State Bank continued to operate from this site until difficulties during the depression resulted in the bank's closing in 1934 since that time the building has been used for various business purposes. Due to its solid construction the Odem building has withstood the storm and fire-related disasters which destroyed or damaged many of the early wooden structures in Sinton's downtown area.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Sinton rose in the 1890s as a planned railroad town, and merchant David Odem was among the founders who bet on its future. In 1909 the Sinton State Bank—of which Odem was a principal stockholder—raised this handsome Beaux Arts building, with a corner entry, terra cotta ornament, and round-arched windows that announced the young town's ambitions. The bank failed during the Depression in 1934, but its sturdy walls outlasted the storms and fires that leveled Sinton's early wooden storefronts.
Why it matters
A small-town bank building in fine Beaux Arts dress reflects the optimism and civic pride of the railroad boom that platted much of rural Texas at the turn of the century.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · David Odem
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Plymouth Oil Company and Plymouth Oilers
Stinton, TX
Founded in 1923 by Pennsylvania oilman M.L. "Mike" Benedum, the Plymouth Oil Company remade Sinton, Texas, drilling major discoveries on the Welder Ranch in 1935 and near Taft in 1937 while building company housing and offering health and retirement benefits rare for the era. In 1949 executive Mike Griffith organized the Plymouth Oilers, a semi-pro baseball team stocked with paid players and summer college athletes whose games at company-built Oiler Park drew the whole community. The Oilers captured state, national, and world semi-pro championships in 1951 before the team folded in 1957 and the company was sold to Ohio Oil, later Marathon, in 1962.
St. Paul
St. Paul, TX
St. Paul was born of a 1910 land promotion, when developer George H. Paul bought 70,000 acres and, with the Shary Land Company, platted a townsite and advertised it across the Midwest. Excursion trains carried prospective settlers from Kansas City twice a month, and the town boomed with homes, a three-story hotel, stores, schools, and a company farm employing up to 300 workers. By the 1920s cotton gins hummed and eight trains a day passed through, though the town declined after World War II as residents left for the cities.
Sodville Community
Sinton, TX
In 1907–08 an Iowa land developer partnered with the vast Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company to market 56,000 acres of South Texas brushland to Midwestern buyers, and Mexican migrant laborers cleared mesquite so thick that prospects had to blaze their own trails. The settlement that grew here took the promotional name Sodville for its fertile soil, sprouting a school, stores, cotton gins, and churches through the 1910s and 1920s. As rural Texans drifted toward cities after mid-century, its school consolidated, its stores closed, and by 2000 only a corner and a few homes remained.
Taft Agricultural Industrial Complex
Taft, TX
Laid out along the rail line in 1900 by the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, Taft was designed from the start as a model community to lure Northern investors and farmers. At its heart the company built a sprawling agricultural-industrial complex—a slaughter and packing house, cold storage and ice plant, cottonseed oil mill, cotton gins, a creamery, and more. As land values rose and the company sold off its holdings, the once-tightly-controlled company town diversified into an independent community.