Page-Decrow-Weir House

🏛️The era

This house went up in 1903, at the start of the twentieth century. Central Texas was changing then. The open-range cattle drives of the previous generation had given way to fenced ranches, rail connections and growing county-seat towns. Georgetown, the seat of Williamson County, was one of them.

The decades after the Civil War had seen enormous herds of Texas cattle driven north to markets, and Williamson County lay in the territory those drives passed through. By the early 1900s ranching had become a more settled business. Successful ranchers often chose to live in town, close to schools, churches, banks and the courthouse.

Architecture reflected that new prosperity. The Queen Anne style, with its towers, wraparound porches, bay windows and lively outlines, was among the most popular house styles in America in the late 1800s and around 1900. A Queen Anne home in a Texas county seat announced that its owners had arrived.

👥People & events

The house's story runs through a series of ranching families. J. M. Page had it built for his family in 1903. Then, the same year, he sold it to his brother-in-law, Thomas Decrow. The marker doesn't say why the house changed hands so quickly. That short gap is one of those small historical mysteries, and it shows how closely family ties and property were bound together in a small ranching community.

In 1920 Horace M. Weir bought the house, another rancher in the line of owners. The property took on a surprising new role in the 1930s, when a polo training center operated there.

Polo may seem an unlikely sport for Central Texas, but it fit ranch country well. The game depends on skilled riders and well-trained horses, and those were exactly what a ranching region could supply. A polo training center on the grounds of a Georgetown home suggests a lively horse culture that continued well into the twentieth century.

In 1988 the house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark, recognizing both its architecture and its place in Georgetown's story.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The Page-Decrow-Weir House captures a turning point in the American West. The rough, open-range cattle frontier was giving way to settled towns with substantial homes, where ranching wealth was put into lasting architecture and community life. Across the West, homes like this one marked the frontier's shift from a place people passed through to a place they put down roots.

It also shows how national tastes reached every region. Queen Anne houses went up from New England to California, spread by pattern books, magazines and the rail network that carried building materials. Seeing the style in a Central Texas ranching town shows how connected even distant parts of the country had become by 1900.

The polo years add an unexpected layer. They show that ranch country was not only a place of work but also a place of sport and leisure built around the horse, which had shaped life in the West for generations.

🧭If you visit

View the house from the street, and please respect it as private property unless it is clearly open to the public. Look for the features the marker points out: the octagonal tower, the two-tiered wraparound porch and the two-story bay window. Together they make a textbook example of Queen Anne style, and a good chance to teach kids a bit about reading old houses.

While you're there, picture the property in the 1930s with horses and riders training for polo. It makes this elegant town house feel a little more like the ranch country it grew out of.

Georgetown is a rewarding stop on any Central Texas road trip, with its historic courthouse square and many older homes that reflect the town's prosperous past. Plan some extra time to walk the neighborhood. Houses like this one are best enjoyed at a relaxed pace.