Teas Nursery Company
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Teas Nursery Company traces its history to 1843, when John C. Teas (1827-1907) began selling apples out of his back yard in Indiana. After moving the business to Missouri in 1868, Teas became a nationally prominent horticulturist. In 1908 his son, horticulturist Edward Teas, Sr. (1870-1951), met developer W. W. Baldwin who was then planning the community of Westmoreland Farms and the town of Bellaire in southwest Harris County. Baldwin hired Teas to execute the planting designs for Bellaire Boulevard and adjacent streets. Teas started work in Bellaire early in 1909. The next year, he moved his family from Missouri to this site and opened Teas Nursery Company. Initially specializing in the sale of fruit trees and flowering shrubs and plants, the business was later expanded to include landscaping services. The company's early projects included the landscaping of Rice Institute (now Rice University) and the River Oaks subdivision. By 1951 Teas Nursery had planted over one million trees in the Houston area. Edward Teas died the same year, leaving ownership of the nursery to his descendants. (1993)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Teas Nursery Company grew from humble roots in 1843, when John C. Teas began selling apples out of his Indiana backyard before becoming a nationally known horticulturist in Missouri. In 1908 his son Edward met developer W. W. Baldwin, who hired him to design the plantings for the new town of Bellaire, and by 1910 the family had relocated to Houston to open the nursery here. Its crews shaped the landscapes of Rice Institute and the River Oaks subdivision, and by 1951 the firm had planted more than a million trees across the Houston area.
Why it matters
The nursery literally greened a growing American city, showing the outsized role horticulture and landscape design played in shaping the character of early-twentieth-century suburbs.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John C. Teas
- · Edward Teas, Sr.
- · W. W. Baldwin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hamilton Shirts
Houston, TX
Edward Joseph Hamilton arrived in Houston in 1883 at age 21 and started a menswear shop that soon specialized in the custom-made shirts still at the heart of the business today. By 1910 five of Edward's younger brothers had become co-owners, and four generations of the family have since kept the company in continuous operation in Houston, from its early home in the Rice Hotel block to a custom workshop and showroom opened near the Galleria in 1975. Renamed Hamilton Shirts in 2007, it ranks among the city's oldest continuously operating retail businesses.
Astrodome
Houston, TX
When Judge Roy Hofheinz set out around 1960 to build the world's first fully enclosed, air-conditioned stadium, skeptics abounded—until the Astrodome opened in April 1965 with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the stands. Its 642-foot clear-span lamella roof, luxury "sky boxes," and (after 1966) the first synthetic turf, "Astroturf," earned it the title "Eighth Wonder of the World." Over decades it hosted baseball, football, basketball, rodeos, Ali fights, the 1968 basketball "Game of the Century," the "Battle of the Sexes," and even 16,000 Hurricane Katrina refugees in 2005.
Minchen House
Houston, TX
Simon Minchen, a pioneer of the oil and gas business across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, bought this Houston lot with his wife Mamie in 1930 and commissioned noted architect Joseph Finger to design a family home. Completed in 1931 by a builder prized for his craftsmanship, the house is an uncommon Houston example of Italian Renaissance style, with a clay tile roof and arched windows and doors. It stands as a mark of the wealth the early oil industry brought to the city.
Roy and Lillie Cullen Building
Houston, TX
When Baylor University's College of Medicine moved from Dallas to Houston in 1943 to help launch the Texas Medical Center, its new home was named for oil-fortune couple Hugh Roy and Lillie Cullen, whose foundation wrote its first check in 1947 to fund the building. Architects Hedrick and Lindsley clad it in Texas cream limestone with modern Deco touches, and a portico was added in 1982. The Cullen Building still stands at the heart of what became one of the world's largest medical complexes.