White-Pool House
Odessa, Ector County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Charles White (1824-1905) moved his family here from Indiana seeking new business opportunities and a drier climate for his wife's health. With the aid of his sons Wilfred Walton White and Herbert Haughton White, he constructed this two-story brick residence in 1887, four years before the organization of Ector County. They modeled the home after their house in Indiana, adapting the style to the available building materials of the area. White farmed his 640-acre tract and also owned a mercantile store on the courthouse square. White's original tract, sold following his death, was divided by later real state transactions. In 1923 the house and fifty acres were purchased by Oso William Pool (B.1891) who had homesteaded land in New Mexico prior to his service in world war I. During the housing shortage created by the area oil boom of 1927, pool converted his residence into sale as individual lots. Later that year he married Helen Augutha Voss and they occupied the front part of the house. They moved in 1929, but member of the Pool family retained possession of the home until Oso Pool donated it to the county in 1977. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Charles White came west from Indiana in the 1880s chasing opportunity and a drier climate, and in 1887—four years before Ector County even organized—he and his sons built this two-story brick house on the open plains near Odessa. Modeled on their Indiana home but adapted to local materials, it stood on a 640-acre tract alongside White's mercantile store. Decades later, WWI veteran Oso Pool bought the place, and during the frantic housing shortage of the 1927 oil boom turned it to new uses before the family finally donated it to the county.
Why it matters
The home traces West Texas from lonely ranching frontier to the boomtown chaos of the oil era, one of the great transformations in American economic life.
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Related people
- · Charles White
- · Oso William Pool
Themes & tags
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