Trippet-Shive House
Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Completed in 1896 for banker and civic leader H.W. Trippet (b.1853), this residence was later sold to Walter E. Shive (b.1873), who owned a successful Waxahachie seed, grain, and coal store. Exhibiting influences of the Queen Anne and Shingle styles of architecture, the Trippet-Shive house is indicative of the houses built in this neighborhood at the turn of the century. Interesting features include the cedar fish-scale shingles, wraparound porch, and octagonal tower.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Completed in 1896 for banker and civic leader H. W. Trippet, this Waxahachie residence was later home to Walter E. Shive, owner of a thriving seed, grain, and coal business. Blending Queen Anne and Shingle styles, it typifies the substantial houses that went up in the neighborhood at the turn of the century, with cedar fish-scale shingles, a wraparound porch, and an octagonal tower.
Why it matters
The house reflects the confidence and prosperity of a Gilded Age Texas town, where merchants and bankers expressed their standing in ornate architecture.
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Related people
- · H. W. Trippet
- · Walter E. Shive
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dunlap - Simpson House
Waxahachie, TX
Built in 1890-91, this exuberant Queen Anne Revival house—complete with hexagonal and octagonal rooms—was the home of Judge Oscar E. Dunlap, a Waxahachie banker, industrialist, and civic leader. Dunlap founded the Sims Library and championed the Good Roads movement, and the home later passed through a succession of prominent local families. It stands as a showpiece of late-nineteenth-century architectural ambition.
Eddy O. Hawkins Home
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Eddy Pennell Hawkins, of a pioneer Ellis County family, built the first two rooms of this Waxahachie home soon after marrying Netta Lewis Carson in 1878. By 1900, prosperous and prominent, he expanded it into a three-story Late Victorian residence blending Queen Anne and Shingle-style influences, with beveled glass and neoclassical porch details. The house mirrors the confidence and wealth of a rising Gilded Age businessman in the North Texas cotton country.
Williams-Erwin House
Waxahachie, TX
Built in 1893 for Edward Williams, this ornate Victorian home displayed the wealth that cotton brought Waxahachie's merchants in the late 19th century. Local contractor C.J. Griggs oversaw its construction, dressing the exterior in beaded boards and shingling and the porch in elaborate Eastlake detailing. Williams sold the house in 1902 to another prominent businessman, R.K. Erwin, whose family kept it until 1943.
The Mahoney-Thompson House
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Dennis Mahoney, a Connecticut contractor, came to Texas in the late 1800s to build Trinity University in Waxahachie, laying its cornerstone in 1902. In 1904 he raised this stately house for himself, which later passed to the family of his son-in-law W. B. Thompson. The Ellis County Historical Museum and Art Gallery has since restored the home.