Moore, Col. Hugh B. and Helen, House

The Colonel Hugh B. and Helen Moore House, built in 1912 on the west shore of Galveston Bay, stands as a tribute to the local, state, and national contributions made by its original occupants. It meets Criterion A at a state level of significance in the area of Military for its connection with strategic planning for U.S. intervention in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution and during World War I; and at a local level of significance in the area of Community Planning and Development for the Moores' role in the economic and cultural development of Texas City. The house meets Criterion B at a state level of significance in the area of Military as the residence of Colonel Hugh Benton Moore (1874-1944) who was instrumental in the successful transport of U.S. troops during both the Mexican Revolution and World War I; and in the area of Government/Politics for its association with Helen Edmunds Moore (1882-1968), one of the early leaders of the women's suffrage movement, the second woman to serve in the Texas House of Representatives, and a president of the Texas League of Women Voters. The Moore House meets Criterion C at a local level of significance in the area of Architecture as an excellent example of residential architecture with Prairie School influences.

Hugh Benton Moore was born on January 11, 1874, in Huntland, Tennessee, one of twelve children of Horatio and Annie Moore. Despite the wishes of his father to follow in his footsteps in the practice of law, young Moore left home at the age of fifteen to work as a messenger boy for the Texas and Pacific Railway in Dallas, Texas. Moore gained experience in the transportation industry over the next few years while working in Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Mexico for various railroad companies, including the Texas Midland Railroad, Mexican National Railroad, Cotton Belt Railroad and the Kansas City-Southern Railway Company. He transferred to Texas City in late 1905 as Traffic Manager for the Kansas City-Southern.

Sepha (Helen) Edmunds (1882-1968), the daughter of Herschell and Helen Goodenough Edmunds, was reared in Kansas City. She was a nurse in a Kansas City hospital when she met Hugh B. Moore while he was being hospitalized. They were married in Kansas City in September 1905 and moved together to Texas City soon thereafter. Although she went by Sepha during her nursing days in Kansas City, she is called Helen in all references made to her after her arrival in Texas City.

Platted in 1893, the community of Texas City is located on the Gulf Coastal Plain across Galveston Bay from Galveston Island. It began as a business venture by Minnesota capitalists for the purpose of developing a port and industrial center. The Texas City Improvement Company was founded to oversee that development, including the construction of a port, and rail The economic depression of the late 1890s led to the company's bankruptcy in 1897, but it was reorganized the following year into two separate businesses: the Texas City Company (later the Mainland Company) to develop the townsite, and the Texas City Terminal Railway Company (later the Texas City Terminal Railroad) to develop the railway and docks. By 1900, Congress had appropriated federal funds to dredge a ship channel, and the community boasted a hotel, post office, grain elevator, and 37 businesses.

When the Moores arrived in Texas City in 1905, however, the community still was recovering from the devastating effects of the 1900 hurricane. The fledgling port, rendered useless by the storm, had just reopened in 1904, and slowly the city's infrastructure was rebuilt. Texas Avenue, between Bay Street and Sixth Street, served as the main business district, with residential areas developing on either side of Texas Avenue from 6th Avenue South to Ninth Avenue North. The city was fertile ground for the enthusiasm and commitment to civic and cultural affairs that Hugh and Helen Moore offered, and it benefitted tremendously from their leadership over the next four decades.

Hugh Moore had been in Texas City only a short time before becoming manager of the Texas City Terminal Railway Company, vice president and general manager of the Wolvin Steamship Lines, and general manager of the Texas City Transportation Company. Eventually, he became president of both the steamship line and the transportation company, as well as president of the Board of Trade and the Mainland Company. His diligence in securing funds from the U.S. Congress in the 1913 Rivers and Harbors Act led to the construction of the Texas City Dike in 1914-15. Built by the Galveston District of the Corps of Engineers, the dike solved severe silting problems in the Texas City channel, thus making the port at Texas City safer, more navigable, and a greater attraction to potential customers.

Moore was highly regarded for his ability to bring new industries and businesses to Texas City. In carrying out the goals of the Texas City Terminal Railway Company, Moore recruited numerous users of the port facilities before World War II, including seven major oil and petrochemical industries, a sugar refinery, a tin smelter, a cotton compress, and the U.S. Army. Moore was recognized by a host of organizations during his lifetime for service to the economic growth of the community. Upon his death in 1944, the local newspaper wrote, "Colonel Moore was called the father and guardian of Texas City. It will stand as testimony to the great life of Colonel Moore."
The responsibility and tasks in civilian life prepared Moore for military duties on an international scale. Political unrest and civil war in Mexico during the second decade of the 20th century led to preparation for potential trouble on the Texas border with Mexico within the administration of U.S. President William Howard Taft's. Because commerce with Mexico accounted for a great portion of the traffic in Texas City's port and because much of the cargo shipped to Mexico was carried on the Wolvin Steamship Lines, business leaders Hugh Moore and Augustus Wolvin also had a vested interest in seeing the rebellion in Mexico ended. They successfully convinced the War Department in Washington of the advantages of locating an army camp in Texas City in case deployment to Mexico was needed. Moore's friendship with Governor Oscar Colquitt may also have helped secure the agreement.

In February 1913, approximately 10,000 troops from the Second Division of the U.S. Army, including infantry, cavalry, and field artillery regiments, engineers, a signal corps company, and an aviation squadron, were mobilized to set up headquarters in Texas City under the command of General William H. Carter. They camped in a sea of tents north of 12th Avenue and west of the bay, three blocks from the newly constructed Moore house. Again, Moore's influence had a significant impact on the development of the community, as the soldiers provided an instant economic boom for Texas City businesses and created a climate for the establishment of new businesses as well.

Shortly after the arrival of the Army's Second Division in Texas City, tensions between the United States government under then-President Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican dictatorship of Mexican President Victoriano Huerta came to a boiling point. When an officer of Huerta's arrested several American sailors in Tampico, Mexico, U.S. President Wilson reacted by ordering an invasion of Mexico at the town of Vera Cruz. In April 1914, Wolvin steamships, under the management of Moore and Wolvin, transported troops from Texas City under the command of General Frederick Funston to the invasion site, where both Mexicans and Americans suffered casualties. Although the situation was temporarily eased through arbitration and a change in Mexico's leadership, the Army Camp at Texas City continued until it was disbanded and troops were relocated as a result of the 1915 hurricane.

Hugh Moore's expertise with the transportation of men and equipment during the Mexican crisis had not gone unnoticed. After the outbreak of World War I, Moore was summoned to Washington, D.C., to confer with General John J. Pershing who recognized Moore's qualities as a transportation expert and offered him a position on his staff. Moore was commissioned into the Quartermaster Corps with the rank of Captain.

After U.S. entry into World War I, the officers of the American Expeditionary Force, including Captain Moore, sailed under cover to Europe on the H.M.S. Baltic on May 19, 1917, at the head of the American invasion force. Arriving in Liverpool, England on May 28, 1917, Moore was one of the first of two million Americans to traverse the Atlantic and serve in World War I.

Moore, as head of the Army Transport Service, organized the massive job of transporting troops and supplies to the war in Europe. His success in bringing coal to France under extremely difficult circumstances led to his promotion to Colonel. As director of all ports and steamship operations, Col. Moore was in charge of nearly 32,000 people, including 883 officers, 227,224 enlisted men, 1,768 civilians, and 1,512 German prisoners, and for directing incoming ships to the appropriate European ports for unloading. Brigadier General W. W. Atterbury, Director General of Transportation wrote to Col. Moore: "It [the movement of supplies and fuel] has progressed under your command from a disorganized handling of a comparatively small volume of incoming freight to a systematic organization of probably what has become the greatest shipping agency the world had ever known."

Moore was hailed for his handling of the troop and supply movements by many and called a genius by William J. Wilgus, Deputy Director General of Transportation who said, "... The wide scope of [Moore's] duties, touching as they did the ports and inland waterways of France, and water communications between them and many ports in the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and Italy, called for the executive talent of a high order. He succeeded under conditions that would have disheartened a less courageous spirit". Moore later was decorated with the National Order of the Legion of Honor by French Chancellor G. L. Morait and with the Distinguished Service Cross by General Pershing.

After the end of World War I, Col. Moore, his task not yet complete, returned to the United States on December 6, 1918, to coordinate the disembarking of U.S. troops to their homeland. Utilizing captured German ships, converting ships of war, and equipping large, fast freight steamers, more than 2 million U.S. troops were transported home from Britain, France, Italy, Holland, Spain, and Scandinavia.
Because of his popularity after World War I, Moore was recruited by many businesses across the country to relocate. Moore did live in New York for a time after the war, working for Peabody Securities as a vice president. Even there, he continued to promote the port of Texas City to Peabody directors. By 1920, however, he had moved back to Texas City, continuing his leadership in the Texas City Company (later known as the Mainland Company), the Texas City Board of Trade, and other civic and business organizations.

In July of 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Col. Moore the post of Public Works Administrator for the region of Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. On July 15, 1933, Moore sent a telegram to Senator Tom Connally in Washington, D.C., "Keenly appreciate the honor, but I am so distinctively and individually responsible for the welfare and destiny of this little community of 5,000 people that I must decline to take on an additional job that carried problems greater than my capacity."

General James G. Harbord, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the United States, visited Moore at his home in Texas City in early 1939. With the escalating hostilities between the United States and Germany, it is not known whether Harbord's mission was to recruit Moore into his old ATS job or to seek advice from the transportation expert, but after Harbord's visit, in May 1939, Moore went to Washington, D.C., and on May 30, 1939, had lunch with General Pershing at the Army-Navy club. After World War II started, Colonel Moore was assigned as an advisor to Company C, 45th Engineers' Battalion when it landed in France. Moore was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, posthumously, on October 19, 1944.

Helen Edmunds Moore in many ways epitomized the emergence of women during the Progressive era, when heretofore exclusively social clubs for women became vehicles for reform and a better society. An organizer and second president of the Texas City Civic Club, Helen Moore, along with her husband, was instrumental in the founding of the community's public library. The privilege to cast a ballot was seen as essential to social change in America, and women across Texas and the nation, including Helen Moore, worked to secure that elusive right. She chaired the suffrage organizations in Galveston and Texas City and served as the first vice president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association. After the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, she remained active in the political realm in Texas, serving as president of the Texas League of Women Voters and as a delegate to the League's national convention in 1924. In 1928, Helen Moore became the third woman elected to serve in the Texas Legislature, preceded only by Edith Wilmans of Dallas, who served in the House of Representatives (1923-1925), and Margie Neal of Carthage, elected to the Texas Senate in 1926. During her three terms in the legislature (1929-1933 and 1935-1937), Moore worked for better treatment for the mentally ill, including their removal from jails and the improvement of the state's mental institutions. The first Psychopathic Hospital for the treatment of mental illness at the medical college in Galveston was a result of her efforts. She also concerned herself with protective legislation for women and children, again continuing the spirit of Progressivism demonstrated earlier in her career.

After moving to Texas City, Hugh and Helen Moore first resided downtown in the Southern Hotel (razed) until they were able to purchase a house at 202 3rd Avenue North. In 1912 their home at 9th Avenue North and Bay Street was completed. Built in the then-popular Prairie School style of architecture, the Moore House in many ways reflected the interests and worldliness of the Moores. Hugh Moore's interest in the steamship industry and Helen Moore's reported devotion to fishing may have played a role in the selection of their house site, separated from the waters of Galveston Bay only by Bay Street and the adjacent shore. Keenly aware of the destructive nature of the Gulf of Mexico, Moore had the house constructed by the James Steward Company of Chicago to withstand all manner of disasters. According to Colonel Moore's diary, it cost $150,000.00 to construct the house in 1912.

The construction of the house is notable. Concrete mixed with railroad rails provides reinforcement, while the walls are constructed of two tiers of fired brick with a plastered structural tile in the inner wall. There is no wood in the load-bearing walls. The walls continue into the ground to their individual foundations. The oak flooring is attached to the walls rather than the walls built on top of the floors. The ceiling joist is a 2" x 12" rough-cut timber board. The electrical wiring was encased in piping (heavy conduit) at the time of construction. The house was also plumbed during construction. The home was constructed with 45 windows to take advantage of the sea breezes, while seven-foot interior doors have glass transoms to assist in the cross-ventilation. Moore installed a radiator in the living room and one in the east. With superb insulation, these two units keep the downstairs very comfortable in the cold humid winters.

Although the Moores did not have children, their three nieces were frequent visitors to the home. U.S. Vice-President Charles G. Dawes (under President Calvin Coolidge), Texas Governor O.B. Colquitt, and Texas Speaker of the House (and later governor) Coke Stevenson were among the early visitors of distinction that Hugh Moore brought to his home. In correspondence dated March 10, 1919, General Pershing wrote of an impending visit, so it is assumed that he also visited.

After World War I, the Moores enlarged the house substantially, perhaps to be more accommodating to the numerous visitors or the children. Alterations completed in 1929 include the porch enclosures now used as sunrooms and a library, the addition of a bath in the 1/2 story, and changes of the balustrade to steel covered with brick. The house was redesigned by the Galveston architectural firm of Stowe and Stowe and work was performed again by the original contractors, the James Steward Company of Chicago.

H. B. Moore's determination to build a solid house resulted in one that has withstood many natural and man-made disasters. Hurricanes in 1915 and 1961 damaged the residence but, despite its proximity to the flooding bay waters, the house fared well compared with others in town. On April 16, 1947, the S.S. Grandcamp, filled with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded at the Texas City wharves just one-half mile from the house. The S.S. High Flyer moored next to the Grandcamp and exploded the following day. The Texas City Disaster, as the explosion came to be called, killed 567 people, injured more than 3,000, and rendered 2,500 homeless. The blast destroyed 15 businesses, damaged 40 others, and destroyed 539 homes. The Moore house, which stood directly in the path of flying debris from the explosion, experienced smoke damage and glass breakage but remained structurally sound. One of four small chandeliers found in each corner of the dining room was shattered and a replacement never was found.

On September 15, 1944, Hugh Benton Moore died in his summer home near Santa Fe, New Mexico, after a brief illness. The Colonel's body was returned to Texas City and laid in state in the great living room of his Texas City house. On September 17, 1944, the Associated Press carried the news of his death nationwide. Local schools, banks, and most businesses closed in his honor. The funeral was conducted by leaders of three major faiths: the Reverend R.P. Hood, First Baptist Church; Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston; and the Right Reverend Monsignor Dan O'Connel of Galveston. He was buried in Galveston County Memorial Park Cemetery near Hitchcock with full military and American Legion honors. When notified of his death, General of the Armies of the United States, General Pershing wrote, "In our hour of greatest need, Colonel Moore stood and fought the good fight, a great soldier is gone and will be sorely missed by us all."

Helen Moore continued to live in the house on Ninth Avenue until 1958 when she suffered a series of strokes and was moved to a nursing home in Houston. She died there in 1968, still often attended by her three nieces. The house appears to have remained vacant until Mr. and Mrs. Dean Pike moved in in 1967. They were there only briefly, for by 1968 its owners and occupants were Galveston County Judge Ray Holbrook and his family. Interior renovation work begun by the Pikes was continued by the Holbrooks. They updated the kitchen, closed several doors, dropped the kitchen ceiling, and replaced the original slate roof with asphalt shingles. In 1981 the present owners purchased the house and added an ornamental iron fence in the front and a decorative cypress fence in the rear, installed central air and heat, and generally updated the property.

The Moore House retains much of its integrity from its date of construction. Moore's attention to construction detail and up-to-date amenities render the house extremely energy efficient, requiring very little maintenance. Alterations in 1929 are historic and do not compromise the building's architectural character. The Hugh and Helen Moore House continues to stand as a recognized landmark in the community, a monument to two of Texas City's finest citizens, reflecting the Moores' prominent standing in the community and their determination to make Texas City a better place to live and work.