HistoricSiteMarkers
Progressive & Modern Era

The Connally Home

Tyler, Smith County, Texas

Marker Inscription

This residence was built in 1906 for prominent Tyler businessman Walter Connally. Connally's business interests included banking, ownership of a gin equipment firm, and part ownership in a hardware company. After his death in 1918, Connally's widow Gretta continued to live in the home with her son and daughter-in-law. The house, which remained in the Connally family for more than 70 years, features influences of Mediterranean and Renaissance Revival styling. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

This residence was built in 1906 for Walter Connally, a prominent Tyler businessman whose interests spanned banking, cotton-gin equipment, and hardware. After his death in 1918, his widow Gretta remained in the home with family, which held the property for more than 70 years. With its Mediterranean and Renaissance Revival influences, the house reflects the prosperity of East Texas commerce in the early 20th century.

Why it matters

The home captures the rise of the regional business class that powered small-city Texas during the cotton and commercial boom of the early 1900s.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · Walter Connally
  • · Gretta Connally

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Chilton-Lipstate-Taylor House

Tyler, TX

Built beginning in 1887 and reportedly modeled on Mary Chilton's childhood home in Virginia, this grand classical revival house in Tyler's Brick Streets district passed through a succession of prominent families. Horace Chilton, a lawyer who rose to become Texas's first native-born U.S. Senator, raised his family here before selling to merchant Jacob Lipstate, and later owners included banker Gus Taylor. The largest dwelling in the historic district, it stands as a showcase of late-19th-century ambition, with its steep hipped roof, Ionic columns, and cantilevered balcony.

Tyler Commercial College

Tyler, TX

Rising in 1899 from the ashes of an earlier normal school, Tyler Commercial College set up in a vacant building once called the Texas Fruit Palace and set out to teach the skills of the new white-collar economy—shorthand, bookkeeping, transcription, and secretarial work. Under teachers like Henry Byrne, inventor of his own shorthand system, it grew into the largest commercial college in the nation, even training Army Signal Corps radio operators during World War II before closing its doors in 1980.

First County Agricultural Extension Agent

Tyler, TX

At a time of failing crops and depressed farm prices, Smith County became the birthplace of the county agricultural agent. In a historic meeting on November 12, 1906, Dr. Seaman A. Knapp of the U.S. Department of Agriculture joined County Judge S. A. Lindsey and dozens of local leaders to appoint William C. Stallings the first county agent in Texas—and the first in the nation to serve a single county. Building on Knapp's earlier farm-demonstration work, this step helped launch what became the worldwide Cooperative Extension Service.

Rudolph Bergfeld

Tyler, TX

Rudolph Bergfeld arrived in Tyler in 1878 and, over the next half-century, helped remake the town. Starting with a saloon, he moved into real estate, railroads, and eventually banking, founding loan-and-trust firms that merged into major regional banks. He helped launch the Grand Opera House, developed the historic Azalea District, sold the city land for a park that bears his name, and served for years on the school board.