Sterling-Berry House

The Sterling-Berry House is an extraordinarily detailed work of domestic architecture. The extremely wide span of the front porch opening and the squat, massive columns flanking the seating bay at the south end of this porch bespeak the use of reinforced concrete construction. Cast-stone detail, although of conventional classical derivation, is rendered with an Art Nouveau quality of linear, abstract stylization. The emphatic horizontal nature of the house remarks the probable source of architectural inspiration, the progressive architecture of Chicago and the Middle West. The massing, roof, and bracketed eave bespeaks a Mediterranean or Italian influence. The house is located in Rossmoyne, one of a number of private neighborhoods developed in the South End of Houston during the early 20th century. The owner of the house, Ross S. Sterling, was president of the R.S. Sterling Investment Company, the developer of Rossmoyne. He was a major business figure in the state of Texas in the first half of the 20th century.

The Sterling-Berry House is an unusual example in Houston of the progressive architecture of the early 20th century, especially that which emanated from the Middle West. The big-scale, symmetrical composition, and especially the employment of reinforced concrete to permit wide-span openings can be related to the work of such architects as George W. Maher and Louis S. Curtiss of Kansas City. Ornament based upon languid ab- stractions of floral patterns was typical of the Art Nouveau of France and Belgium, which can be seen in the architectural ornament of Curtiss in particular, whose best-known building in Texas is the Tarrant County Courthouse in Fort Worth. The use of reinforced concrete construction in domestic architecture was rare; even more so in architectural articulation. The unusual treatment of ornament and the manneristic detailing of columns, canopies, planters, and parapet walls called attention to the novel construction technique employed on the porch of the Sterling-Berry House. The original house of 1916, however, has roof eaves and massing reminiscent of an Italian or Mediterranean villa.

The original occupant, Ross Shaw Sterling (1875-1948), was born in Anahuac, Texas. After leaving his family's farm, he set up the grain and feed business at Sour Lake, Texas, in 1903.
Sterling expanded his business to Saratoga, Dayton, and Humble, small towns between Beaumont and Houston. These were also the sites of early oil discoveries along the Texas Gulf Coast. During the panic of 1907, Sterling acquired four small private banks in these towns, enabling him to enter the banking field. In 1909, he made his first investment in oil exploration. This led to the formation of the Humble Oil Company in 1911, of which Sterling was president. In 1917, he reorganized the company with a group of fellow oilmen to form the Humble Oil and Refining Company. Sterling was president of this company from 1917 until 1922 and chairman of the board of directors from 1922 until 1925. Sterling also invested in real estate, especially in Houston, where he, his wife Maud Abbie Gage Sterling, and their children moved in 1905. Sterling bought a large tract of land southwest of town, part of which he sold to the Houston Land Corporation in 1910 for the development of the residential subdivision of Montrose. In 1914, Sterling, his brother Frank Prior Sterling, and his sister Florence Sterling organized the R. S. Sterling Investment Company to develop what was left of this tract as a residential development which Sterling, the president of the company, called Rossmoyne.

Rossmoyne was laid out by the Houston architect George H. Fruehling. It was an enclave neighborhood based on the St. Louis, private-place type first used in Houston for the layout of Courtland Place in 1907. Rossmoyne consisted of a central, esplanaded boulevard three blocks long, onto which the large houses faced. Adjoining the two strips of property bordering on the boulevard were tiers of lots which faced west toward Mount Vernon Street, and east toward Montrose Boulevard. Rossmoyne Boulevard, as the principal thoroughfare was named, was a southern extension of Yoakum Boulevard, one of the main streets in Montrose. Sterling attempted to interest friends and associates in building houses in Rossmoyne. J. S. Cullinan, founder of the Texas Company, briefly considered buying a large tract in Rossmoyne. Eventually, Frank P. Sterling and his family; Will, Mike, and Ima Hogg, children of Texas's famed Governor Jim Hogg; Edgar E. Townes, general counsel of the Humble Oil and Refining Company; Lovic D. Garrett, geologist for the Gulf Production Company and Towne's brother-in-law; and Dr. and Mrs. Peter H. Scardino occupied houses on Rossmoyne Boulevard. William Stamps Farish, another cofounder of the Humble Oil and Refining Company, and his mother, Kate Power Farish, built adjoining houses in Rossmoyne along Montrose Boulevard, as did E. E. Townes' brother, John D. Townes, Jr., an attorney for the Humble Oil and Refining Company.

The Sterling-Berry House was apparently the first house built in Rossmoyne, although it is not certain that Sterling built it specifically as his family's residence. Accord- ing to Noble W. Carl, the third owner of the house, it was built by the Russell Brown Company, an architectural and contracting firm specializing in residential construction. The detailing of the sun porch windows of the Sterling-Berry House lends credibility to this attribution, as it is very much like that which Brown employed on his own house in West-Moreland Place.
Russell Brown (c. 1877-1963) organized the Russell Brown Company in 1908 and remained extremely active in residential construction after World War II. By the time the Sterling-Berry House was built, Brown had opened branch offices in Dallas, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. Real estate advertisements in the Houston Daily Post for June 11 and 18, 1916, noted that the Russell Brown Company had houses underway in Rossmoyne. However, it is also known that in 1917 Sterling had another Houston builder, E. L. Crain and Company, build several speculative houses in Rossmoyne. It is documented that in 1934 and 1938 the second owner of the present house, Joel H. Berry, retained the Russell Brown Company to remodel the house.

In 1919, Mr. and Mrs. Sterling retained the Houston architect Alfred C. Finn (1883- 1964) to add a front porch to the house. Finn was born in Bellville, Texas, and had been trained in the offices of the Fort Worth architects Sanguinet and Statts, who sent him to their Houston branch office in 1912. The next year Finn launched his own office. During his first ten years in practice, he was responsible for many houses in the new South End suburbs of Houston: the Evans House of 1918 on Lovett Boulevard, the Westheimer House of 1919, and the Fondren House of 1921, both still standing on Montrose Boulevard; the Wharton House of 1919 in Shadyside; the Jones-Hunt House of 1922 in Courtland Place; and the Block House of 1922 in the Turner Addition. Finn designed a second house in Ross-Moyne (now demolished) for John C. Townes, Jr.. For Ross Sterling's younger brother, A. A. Sterling, Finn laid out the nearby subdivision of Chelsea Place where he designed the A. A. Sterling House and the Michaux House. He would also design a public library at Goose Creek (now Baytown) built by Ross Sterling in 1925 and a large house in Broadacres for Frank P. Sterling in 1926. Finn's best-known buildings resulted from his collaboration with the Houston entrepreneur Jesse H. Jones, a sometime associate and rival of Sterling. Under Jones's sponsorship, Finn was involved in the design of the Gulf Building, St. Paul's Methodist Church, the Sam Houston Coliseum and Music Hall, and the San Jacinto Monument. He would also design the People's National Bank in Tyler, and the Ezekiel W. Cullen Administration Building at the University of Houston, and the Sakowitz specialty store.

The progressive tendencies that Finn displayed in his addition to the Sterling House were apparent in only a few other commissions, all of which dated from this period. The Humble Oil and Refinery Company Station 4, the first service station to be built by that company, was designed by Finn in 1918. There he allied reinforced concrete construction and Art Nouveau cast-stone ornament. This sort of ornament was applied to other commercial projects by Finn, but apparently not to any other residential work.

Ross Sterling, after resigning the presidency of the Humble Oil and Refining Company to become chairman of its board of directors, began to involve himself in varied civic and business endeavors in Houston. In 1922 he was appointed to the Harris County- Houston Ship Channel Navigation District board, of which he became chairman in 1926. By odd coincidence, Sterling was the top man in both the Port Authority and the area's oil industry during a crucial juncture of their history and during the decade of Houston's most prodigious growth.

In 1924 Sterling bought Houston's oldest newspaper, the Houston Post, and consolidated it with another newspaper to form the Houston Post Dispatch, which subsequently became the current Houston Post. An extension of this enterprise was the inauguration in 1925 of KPRC, Houston's first commercial radio station. The same year Sterling purchased a controlling interest in the Houston National Bank and became its chairman. Following the death of Henry F. MacGregor in 1923, he became chairman of the Board of Trustees of Hermann Hospital Estate, of which he had been a member since 1918. The Hermann Hospital Estate invested in land and retained the mineral rights under the advice of Sterling, thereby amassing great wealth and providing the foundation for what is now The Texas Medical Center. Sterling also organized the American Maid Flour Mill in 1922 and built the 22-story Post Dispatch Building in downtown Houston between 1924-1926, as well as the Sterling Building. These ventures led to his resignation as chairman of the Humble Oil and Refining Company in 1925. The next year he and Mrs. Sterling moved from the house in Rossmoyne to the vast, limestone-clad villa (National Register, 1982) that Finn had designed for them at Morgan's Point. It was from this latter house that Sterling would enter the arena of Texas politics, first as chairman of the Texas Highway Commission from 1927 until 1930, and then as Governor of Texas from 1931 until 1932.

According to listings in Houston city directories, the present house was vacant from 1926 until 1929. In 1934, the House was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Joel H. Berry. Joel Halbert Berry (1890-1952) was a respected Houston banker, lawyer, and civic leader. After serving as County Attorney and County Judge of Delta County where he was raised, Judge Berry moved his family to Houston in 1927. While residing at 4515 Rossmoyne Boulevard, Berry was active as a partner in the law firm of Vinson, Elkins, Weems, and Francis (1927-1940), and was later a partner in the firm Berry and Richards (1940-1952). He was also a member of the Houston City Council, Mayor Pro-Tempore of Houston (1924-44), founder and president of the South Main State Bank (1944), and served on the boards of numerous banks as well as civic and business organizations. Upon acquisition of 4515 Rossmoyne for $14,000, he spent an additional 12,662 in remodeling the property into a residential showcase. Mrs. Berry's gardening talents beautified the property, which was often the site of garden club meetings.

In 1947 the house was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Noble W. Carl. The Carls owned the house until 1979, selling it to Mr. and Mrs. Roy E. Saffel, who sold the property to the present owners in July 1981. During this entire period, it was used as a single-family residence. The deed restrictions in Rossmoyne filed on 14 December 1914, expired in 1935 and were not renewed. Between the five large houses built on Rossmoyne Boulevard from 1916 to 1922, a series of apartment buildings was erected. Although conforming to the scale and character of the existing houses, they nonetheless marked the end of Rossmoyne's initial phase of development as a somewhat unsuccessful elite neighborhood.

After World War II, other apartment buildings of less careful design, as well as a series of medical/professional buildings, were constructed along Montrose and Rossmoyne boulevards, resulting in the demolition of some of the larger houses. The construction of U.S. 59 (Southwest Freeway) between 1958 and 1961 resulted in the demolition of all the houses in Rossmoyne along the south side of Kenwood Street and in the erection of a visual barrier along the southern edge of the subdivision. The brick piers at the entrance to the Rossmoyne Addition, at Rossmoyne and Kenwood, seem to have been removed at this time, while those at Rossmoyne and Richmond Avenue were sacrificed to street widening in the early 1970s. In 1960, Rossmoyne Boulevard was redesignated as Yoakum Boulevard. By the late 1970s, efforts began to reverse this decline and to rehabilitate the neighborhood. Contributing to these efforts was the remodeling of surviving houses for residential and commercial use, as well as the construction of compatible, new, multi-family residential buildings. Among these, the Sterling-Berry House remains the most outstanding work of architecture and the most notable historic landmark. Recently renovated by its present owners, architect Robert and Susan Boger Stem, it now serves as office.