Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Storybook mansions

Henrietta King's castle-like, turreted home was built on the bluff on the site of the old Mann place.

They called it King's Row. Some of the city's fanciest homes were built by legendary South Texas cattle ranchers on Upper Broadway on the bluff. The turreted and gabled homes stood on the bluff with a proud prosperity, nothing discrete about it. They were built to show off their owners great wealth.
   The city's most impressive home in its time was Martha Rabb's Magnolia Mansion. It was built in 1872, at the corner of Broadway and Lipan. Martha and her husband John moved to Banquete in 1857. John was attracted here by his cousin, a horse-trader and gun-hand known as Sally Skull. Within a few years, Rabb had one of the largest herds of range cattle in Texas. After his death, the cigarillo-smoking Martha was called "The Cattle Queen of Texas."
   It was during this time that she built the Magnolia Mansion on the bluff. After she married a preacher from Austin and sold the Rabb ranch holdings, she also sold the house on the bluff to David Hirsch, the founder of Corpus Christi National Bank, who in turn sold it to Mifflin Kenedy. The rancher bought it for his son John G. The house was used as a temporary hospital during the hurricane of 1919. The house was moved in 1939 to make way for the Corpus Christi Cathedral. It was torn down in 1952.

Henrietta King's 20-room, ornate mansion was built in 1893 on property bought by Capt. King in 1862.

   Mifflin Kenedy, Richard King's steamboat partner and lifelong friend, built his mansion next to the Magnolia Mansion in 1885. It was an Italinate villa painted in three shades of olive green. It was the talk of the town. It had hot and cold running water. It took 200 gas burners to light the interior. It had a tower that soared 65 feet above the roof line. The interior was finished with natural wood - walnut, oak, mahogany, cherry and cypress. The wood trim on the stairway was polished mesquite.
   Kenedy died in bluff mansion
   The dark-eyed, white-goateed Kenedy died in the mansion after a heart attack on March 14, 1895. The Caller next day reported: "A gloom was cast over our little city yesterday morning when the sad words 'Captain Kenedy is dead' were passed along our streets." His daughter Sarah Josephine and her husband Dr. Arthur Spohn lived in the home after the captain's death. The house was torn down in 1937 and the materials taken to the ranch, La Parra, at Sarita.

The Mifflin Kenedy home, shown in a rare snowstorm, was built in 1885. The tower soared 65 feet.

   The King-Kleberg mansion at 517 Upper North Broadway was built in 1893 by Henrietta Chamberlain King, according to "King Ranch" by Tom Lea, although some local sources say it was built by daughter Alice King Kleberg.
   The King home was just to the north of Martha Rabb's Magnolia Mansion. It was built on the site of the old Mann house, which dated back to the 1850s. The Mann home, like many others of that time, had a family burial plot in the back garden. This was where the King carriage house was located.
   The King home was a 20-room mansion with castle-like turrets and gingerbread trim. It was ornate and extravagantly furnished. It looked down with eyes that might, or might not, have surveyed the life that went on below. There were wooden steps with a hand railing that led down the bluff in front of the King mansion. But Henrietta King was more likely to ride up the bluff in one of her fancy carriages.
   When President William Howard Taft visited Corpus Christi in 1909, Henrietta King had a dinner for him in the mansion. Knowing his reputation as a man with an enormous appetite, she had a 60-pound turkey sent from Cuero for the main course. The house became the winter home of the Klebergs; they spent summers at the ranch. The house was dismantled and the materials moved in 1945 after the Diocese of Corpus Christi acquired the site.

The home of Mayor Clark Pease, built in 1905, was destroyed in 1962.

   Walter Elmon Pope came to Corpus Christi in 1908 to open a law practice. He became a city attorney and then a state legislator. He wrote the state's first highway laws when automobiles were just coming into general use. Pope bought the Corpus Christi Times, which was the afternoon competitor of the Corpus Christi Caller, in 1917. (He sold the paper to Houston Harte and Bernard Hanks in 1928.) Pope, called "Uncle Elmer," ran for governor, but was defeated by "Ma" Ferguson. Pope bought a two-story mansion at 223 South Broadway, which was built about 1880. After Pope died in 1944, the house was occupied by his daughter, Mrs. G.R. Scott. The Pope-Scott house was torn down in 1958.

On the right is the Henrietta King home and on the left is Martha Rabb's Magnolia Mansion, which later became the John G. Kenedy home.

   The two-story Clark Pease home was built in 1905 at 521 South Broadway, next door to the W.W. Jones home to the north and the Joe Weil home to the south. Pease came to Corpus Christi in 1904. He was mayor from 1909 to 1913. He established the Clark Pease bank, which later became the City National Bank. (It was one of the local banks that failed during the Depression.) The house was built with a carriage house, which was converted into a garage for Pease's Hudson-Maxwell. The house was torn down in 1962.
   Herman Cohn house
   One of the city's finest old mansions was Herman Cohn's second house on the bluff. Cohn was the co-founder of the Gugenheim-Cohn Drygoods Co. Cohn's first house was at 1311 N. Chaparral. He built a big colonial revival mansion in 1914 at 425 South Broadway. It was probably the city's most impressive structure. This stately brick mansion had some unusual features. It had a system of vents that allowed it to be cooled by natural drafts. It had a master vacuum cleaning system in the basement with air tubes in the walls connecting to all the rooms. To clean a room, you plugged a hose into the wall and vacuumed the dirt away. It had two Italian marble fireplaces, one pink and one green. It was destroyed by fire, set by an arsonist, in 1976.
   Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4313 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.
  
  

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