Percy Herman House
McAllen, Hidalgo County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This house was built in 1933 for Percy Herman (1884-1967), a major influence in the development of McAllen. Herman was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and in 1910, he married Stella H. Lazarus. Herman soon moved his family to Texas where he opened stores across various South Texas towns. He and his family finally settled in McAllen, opening the valley mercantile store in 1916. The Hermans became widely successful and were considered one of the first Jewish families in McAllen. Percy Herman hired Edwin W. Byers (1896-1957), who had designed buildings across the country, to design this home. Its Spanish eclectic style with an asymmetrical floor plan features two facades on a corner lot, a stucco exterior and clay roof tiles. Wrought-iron fixtures and cast concrete decorative elements add to the home’s design and style.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1933 for merchant Percy Herman, one of McAllen's most influential early businessmen, this Spanish Eclectic home reflects both his success and the growing Jewish community of South Texas. Born in Iowa, Herman opened stores across the region before settling in McAllen in 1916 to run the Valley Mercantile store. He hired well-traveled architect Edwin W. Byers to design the house, whose stucco walls, clay-tile roof, and wrought-iron details grace a prominent corner lot.
Why it matters
The Herman house honors one of McAllen's first Jewish families and the merchants whose stores helped build the commercial life of the booming Rio Grande Valley.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1930s, McAllen and the wider Rio Grande Valley were in the middle of a remarkable transformation. Railroads and irrigation had turned the South Texas brushland into a green expanse of citrus and produce, and new towns were swelling with settlers, farmers, and — crucially — the merchants who supplied them. In a growing town, the general merchant was a linchpin of daily life, the person whose store connected a scattered farming population to the goods of the wider world.
Into this booming commercial landscape came Jewish merchant families, part of a long and often overlooked thread in the history of the American South and Southwest. Frequently arriving as retailers, they opened dry-goods and mercantile stores in small and mid-sized towns, becoming pillars of local commerce and, in time, of civic life. In many a Southern town, the department store on Main Street bore a Jewish family's name.
Even amid the Great Depression, a merchant who had built a solid business could still prosper — and could still commission the kind of home that announced he had arrived.
People & events
This house was built in 1933 for Percy Herman, born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1884 and destined to become a major force in the growth of McAllen. In 1910 he married Stella Lazarus, and before long he moved his family to Texas, opening stores across a string of South Texas towns. In 1916 the Hermans settled in McAllen and opened the Valley Mercantile store — the enterprise that would carry the family to wide success and establish them as one of McAllen's first Jewish families.
Having prospered, Herman set out to build a home worthy of his standing. He hired the architect Edwin W. Byers, who had designed buildings across the country, and the result was a striking Spanish Eclectic residence. Set on a corner lot with an asymmetrical floor plan, it presents two facades to the street, wrapped in a stucco exterior beneath a clay-tile roof. Wrought-iron fixtures and cast-concrete decorative elements give the house its distinctive character.
Percy Herman lived until 1967, his life spanning the era in which McAllen grew from a young farm town into a substantial Valley city — a rise in which his stores played no small part.
Its place in the American story
The Percy Herman House connects two great American stories. The first is the story of the merchant class that built the commercial life of the country's growing towns. Across the South and Southwest, it was often storekeepers — many of them, like the Hermans, part of small Jewish communities — who supplied the goods, extended the credit, and anchored the Main Streets that turned raw settlements into real towns. The Valley Mercantile was one small piece of a vast national pattern in which retail commerce built the American middle-class town.
The second is the story of Jewish life in the American South and Southwest — a presence that reaches back generations but is easy to overlook. Families who arrived as merchants became civic leaders, synagogue founders, and neighbors, weaving themselves into the fabric of places far from the great Jewish centers of the Northeast. That one of McAllen's most influential early families was Jewish, and among the first in the town, is a reminder of how broadly and deeply that thread runs through American history.
The house's architecture carries its own national note. The Spanish Eclectic style, drawing on Spanish and Mediterranean forms, swept American home design in the 1920s and 1930s — and it was especially at home in the Southwest, where it echoed the region's own colonial past.
If you visit
Take your time with the design of this house, because the details are the story. Notice how it turns the corner of its lot, presenting two facades to the street — an asymmetrical plan that gives it a lively, unexpected silhouette. Look for the hallmarks of the Spanish Eclectic style the marker describes: the smooth stucco walls, the clay-tile roof, the wrought-iron fixtures, and the cast-concrete ornament that dresses the whole. This was the work of an architect with a national résumé, and it shows.
Then let the house tell you about the man who built it. In 1933, in the teeth of the Depression, a merchant who had started with stores scattered across South Texas could commission a home this refined — a measure of how much a well-run mercantile business could achieve, and of Percy Herman's standing in the town he helped grow.
A stop here rounds out a visit to McAllen by adding the merchant's chapter to the Valley's history, and a reminder of the early Jewish families who helped build it. As you take in the ironwork and the tiled roof, imagine the booming young town that rose around this corner lot — and the storekeeper whose ambition is still written in stucco and clay.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Percy Herman
- · Stella Lazarus Herman
- · Edwin W. Byers
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
D. Guerra & Sons Store
McAllen, TX
Brothers Enrique and Modesto Guerra opened a grocery in the brand-new town of McAllen in 1908, joined two years later by their father Diódoro to form D. Guerra and Sons. The family moved the business into this handsome brick and concrete building in 1912, where it operated until 1964. Its distinctive façade—recessed doorway, concrete brackets, and a molded-brick cornice with starburst and garland designs—still records the firm's name and construction date.
Río Theatre
Mission, TX
In the booming early-1900s Rio Grande Valley, Spanish immigrant and bricklayer Juan Bautista Barberá opened Teatro La Paz around 1912, bringing films, touring lecturers, actors, and musicians to the young farming town of Mission. Renamed the Río Theatre after Enrique Flores bought it in 1945, the modest vernacular commercial building has anchored the town's cultural life for over a century. It was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1982.
Sam and Marjorie Miller House
McAllen, TX
Samuel Lynn and Marjorie Williams Miller were among the builders of early McAllen, with Sam's hand in nurseries, banking, real estate, and the Hidalgo International Bridge, and Marjorie active in civic life through the Order of the Eastern Star. In 1930 Sam donated 109 acres for a municipal airport that grew into McAllen Miller International. Their English Tudor Revival home, designed in 1937 from Marjorie's own plans after a trip to England, showcases local craftsmanship in stone, half-timbered gables, and gumwood detailing.
Casa de Palmas
McAllen, TX
Where a city park once kept antelope, javelina, and deer, McAllen's boosters built the Casa de Palmas in 1918—a three-story, red-tile-roofed hotel with twin towers around a central patio, meant to be the young town's business and social hub. It sheltered residents through the devastating 1919 hurricane and, after a 1973 fire, was rebuilt faithfully in its original Spanish style.