National Register Listing

Everett Building

a.k.a. Citizens National Bank Building

214--216 Fredonia St., Longview, TX

The 1910 Everett Building survives as one of the few architectural remnants in Longview associated with both the cotton and oil booms in east Texas. As the only extant example of twentieth-century Classical Revival commercial architecture in the city, it remains virtually intact as a reminder of artistic and economic endeavors successfully undertaken by Longview's early business community. Typical of the early twentieth-century revival of classicism in architecture, the Everett Building exhibits a naive and in this case reserved application of exterior ornamentation. Classical elements and variations in proportion and fenestration were incorporated into much the same mass that Victorian details would have been applied a decade earlier. But the formalism executed in the detailing and window/door arrangement defines the building as a breaking away from fussy, over adorned Victorian prototypes. Designed to represent literal and figurative solidarity, the building has meant much the same through the years to the citizens of Longview and has housed numerous individuals and businesses significant to the city's early history.

Local builder and business entrepreneur L.J. Everett sold and conveyed to the Citizens National Bank of Longview a parcel of land in January 1909. Another parcel, the north 25 feet of the Fredonia Street frontage was deeded to the Citizens National Bank in June of 1910 by G.T. Reynolds. Construction of the Everett Building on that site was completed in 1910 as a collaborative effort of builder Everett and architect Samuel Joseph Blocker.

Blocker was a regionally prominent architect and educator. In addition to the Everett Building, he designed numerous commercial, residential, and school buildings in Longview and east Texas. Blocker served as superintendent for the Longview and. Dallas school systems, taught in Dallas, and during his forty years involved in education, wrote technical textbooks. He also is distinguished as one of the earliest members of the State Architectural Association. Lafayette Johnson Everett came to Texas with his widowed mother following the Civil War and settled in the Longveiw area in the early 1870s. He established himself as a successful businessman in Longview and nearby Gladewater where he resided. Everett's expertise in business began with an eight-year employment for the Texas and Pacific Railroad Company. Along with other civic and business responsibilities, Everett oversaw the activities of two banks simultaneously as their presidents; the Citizens National of Longview and a Gladewater bank.

The first occupant of the Everett Building, the Citizens National Bank, was chartered in 1901 as the second publicly chartered bank in the city. During the bank's 23-year history, the fortunes of cotton magnates from east Texas were handled by the CNB due to Longview's importance as a railroad center. Voluntary liquidation closed the Citizens National Bank in 1924.

Two banks occupied the Everett Building for the next sixteen years; the Commercial Guaranty State Bank of Longview which absorbed the remainder of the Citizens National Bank's assets and the Rembert National Bank chartered in 1912 as the Guaranty State Bank. Rembert National survived the difficult economic conditions of the Depression due to the discovery of oil in Gregg County in 1931. Oil wells and oil fortunes proliferated; the bank outgrew its leased quarters in the Everett Building and moved across the street in 1940 as the Longview National Bank.

Other tenants to follow the Rembert National Bank were the American Red Cross during World War II and Lanier Clothers from 1944 to 1960. After 1960 and until June of 1979, the Everett Building remained virtually empty, except for special temporary activities such as the Bicentennial headquarters in 1976.

Throughout its early history, attorneys, doctors, barbers, druggists, mercantile stores, and a great number of important services were provided by the businesses and people housed in the Everett Building. Several professionals officed in the building were also prominent in local social and political circles. Dr. Northcutt, one of the early office tenants was a mayor of Longview. Rembert National Bank was named for F.T. Rembert, supposedly the city's first millionaire. Cotton men Herman Loeb, Ike Killingsworth, and Baron Von Kissler were prominent local figures who had business dealings with occupants of the Everett Building. Legal documents dealing with leases and rights of the oil industry were drafted by locally prominent attorneys Thadeus Stinchcomb and Erasmus Young in offices above the bank. Longview citizens became familiar with the building for its numerous professional services and its financial and commercial functions.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1979.