Smith-Rogers House
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THIS HOUSE WAS BUILT FOR EARLY AMARILLO SETTLERS JAMES BYNUM AND MARIE LOWERY SMITH c. 1904, AND WAS ORIGINALLY LOCATED AT 1101 SOUTH TAYLOR STREET. THE HOME WAS PURCHASED IN 1945 BY JESSE A. ROGERS, WHO PLANNED TO MOVE HIS CAR DEALERSHIP TO THE SITE. INSTEAD OF RAZING THE HOUSE, HE HAD IT MOVED TO ITS PRESENT SITE TO SERVE AS HIS FAMILY’S HOME. AT THE TIME OF ITS RELOCATION, ARCHITECT C.W. BROTT MADE CHANGES TO THE ORIGINAL DESIGN. THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL STYLE HOUSE NOW FEATURES LEADED GLASS WINDOWS, ROOF CRESTING AND INTERIOR WOODWORK FROM THE 1900s AND BRICK VENEER, BALUSTRADES AND FULL-HEIGHT COLUMNS FROM THE 1940s.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built around 1904 for early Amarillo settlers James Bynum and Marie Lowery Smith, this house first stood on South Taylor Street. In 1945 auto dealer Jesse A. Rogers bought it and, rather than raze it for his dealership, moved it to a new site as his family home. In the relocation, architect C.W. Brott reworked the design, so the Classical Revival house today blends 1900s leaded glass, roof cresting, and woodwork with 1940s brick veneer, balustrades, and full-height columns.
Why it matters
It embodies the growth of a Panhandle boomtown and a preservation-minded choice to move and adapt an old home rather than lose it to commercial development.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Amarillo grew up fast on the Texas Panhandle, a flat, wind-swept high plain that had been open ranching country only a generation before. When the railroads arrived in the 1880s, they turned a lonely settlement into a shipping point and then a boomtown, drawing settlers, merchants, and cattlemen to a place that seemed to rise straight out of the grassland. By the early 1900s, Amarillo was a young city determined to look the part, and its early settlers built homes that announced permanence and prosperity.
This was the era of westward expansion still working itself out on the ground — the Panhandle among the last stretches of Texas to be settled and citified. A substantial house in that setting was more than shelter; it was a claim that this raw new town intended to become a real and lasting place.
Into that ambitious moment, around 1904, a home was built for early settlers James Bynum and Marie Lowery Smith, standing then at 1101 South Taylor Street.
People & events
The house began as the home of James Bynum and Marie Lowery Smith, counted among Amarillo's early settlers — the generation that put down roots as the town was still finding its shape. For roughly four decades it stood on South Taylor Street as a settled part of the growing city.
Then, in 1945, its story took an unusual turn. Auto dealer Jesse A. Rogers bought the property, intending to move his car dealership onto the site — a very twentieth-century ambition, the automobile business claiming ground in a city that had grown up around the railroad. The straightforward path would have been to tear the old house down. Rogers chose not to. Instead of razing it, he had the entire house moved to its present site to serve as his own family's home.
That relocation became a second act of creation. The architect C.W. Brott reworked the original design during the move, and the changes are still legible in the building itself. The Classical Revival house today carries leaded glass windows, roof cresting, and interior woodwork from its 1900s origins, blended with brick veneer, balustrades, and full-height columns added in the 1940s. In its very walls, two eras of Amarillo meet — the settler's home and the postwar remaking, joined in one structure.
Its place in the American story
The Smith-Rogers House tells two connected American stories. The first is the rise of the western boomtown: the way railroads and settlement conjured cities like Amarillo out of open plains in a single generation, and the way early residents built substantial homes to prove those cities were here to stay. A house like this is a physical record of that leap from frontier to city.
The second story is about how Americans have chosen to treat their own past. The easy thing, again and again, has been to clear the old away to make room for the new — and countless historic buildings vanished exactly that way as commerce expanded. Rogers's decision to move and adapt the house rather than demolish it runs against that grain. It's an early, personal instance of the preservation impulse that would later grow into a national movement to save and reuse old buildings instead of losing them.
Moving houses whole was itself a distinctly practical American solution, and the blended result — 1900s craftsmanship married to 1940s materials — is honest about its own history. Rather than pretending to a single moment, the house wears both eras openly, a small monument to continuity in a city built on rapid change.
If you visit
Come to this house and look at it as a puzzle of two eras, because that's exactly what it is. See if you can read the seams the marker describes: the older leaded glass, roof cresting, and fine interior woodwork from around 1900, set against the brick veneer, balustrades, and tall columns added in the 1940s. Knowing the building was picked up and moved makes those layers come alive — you're looking at a home that has literally lived in two places.
Remember, too, what almost happened here. This house survives only because someone decided a car lot mattered less than a good old home, and chose to move it rather than lose it. That choice is part of what you're seeing.
For anyone interested in the Texas Panhandle's history, the Smith-Rogers House is a fine stop on a tour of early Amarillo, a tangible link back to the settlers who helped turn high plains into a city. Take a slow look at the Classical Revival lines and let the house tell you about both the boomtown that built it and the postwar city that saved it.
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
- · James Bynum Smith
- · Marie Lowery Smith
- · Jesse A. Rogers
- · C.W. Brott
Themes & tags
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