HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

W. Y. Penn Home

Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas

Marker Inscription

This house was erected in 1895 for William Y. Penn (1860-1951), a local merchant who also served as city alderman and mayor. Like several other Victorian homes here, it was built by C. S. Belford Lumber Co. In 1907 the structure became the residence of the presiding elder of the Georgetown District of the Methodist Church. It was sold in 1945 to druggist M. C. Hodges (1889-1965) and in 1966 to Dr. Van C. Tipton. In 1973 it was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Robert V. Allen. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1975

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built in 1895 for merchant, alderman, and mayor William Y. Penn, this Georgetown home was one of several Victorian houses raised by the local Belford Lumber Co. In 1907 it became the residence of the presiding elder of the Methodist Church's Georgetown District, and over the following decades it passed to a druggist, a doctor, and other families. The house reflects the comfortable prosperity of a growing central Texas county seat.

Why it matters

Homes of merchant-mayors like Penn document the rise of a settled civic and commercial class in Gilded Age Texas towns.

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Related people

  • · William Y. Penn
  • · M. C. Hodges

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

The G. W. Riley House

Georgetown, TX

This Georgetown residence dates to 1872, built by a Southwestern University chaplain who helped found the town's First Methodist church. In 1903 it passed to the Rev. George W. Riley, a circuit-riding Methodist minister who planted or served congregations in a string of Texas towns across nearly half a century. Riley and his wife settled here in part to educate their children, and the house has stayed in the family ever since.

Founding of Georgetown

Georgetown, TX

According to local tradition, Williamson County's first commissioners gathered under a great oak here in May 1848 to choose a county seat. Landowner George Washington Glasscock offered a tract bounded by the tree and the San Gabriel River, and in gratitude the commissioners named the new town Georgetown in his honor. The landmark oak stood until a storm felled it in 1886.

Georgetown Fire House and Old City Hall

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By the 1890s Georgetown had grown enough to need a proper seat of government, and in 1892 it gathered its civic functions under one roof. This building held the mayor's office, council chambers, jail, fire department, and even the water company, a compact expression of a maturing frontier town. It survives as one of the few 19th-century combined city hall–fire stations left in Texas.

Old Dimmitt Building

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