National Register Listing

West, James and Jessie, Mansion

a.k.a. Lunar Science Institute;Lunar and Planetary Institute

3303 NASA Rd. 1, Pasadena, TX

The James and Jessie West Mansion is one of the largest and most opulent dwellings built in Texas during the 1920s. The Italian Renaissance villa is finely crafted and originally was the centerpiece of a 30,000-acre ranch. James Marion West (1871-1941) was a major figure in the early Texas timber industry with extensive ranching and oil interests as well. The property is eligible under Criterion B in the area of Industry as the building most closely associated with James Marion West Senior and his accomplishments, and Criterion C in the area of Architecture for its distinctive architecture and work of prominent Houston architect Joseph Finger (1887-1953). The property is significant at a state level.

James Marion West, Senior, was in many ways the quintessential "rags-to-riches" Texas millionaire. Born in Waynesboro, Mississippi, in May 1871, West's parents moved to the community of Pennington in Trinity County, Texas in 1880. His father, Silas Wesley, and mother, Mattie Clark, eventually settled near Groveton establishing a family farm. Silas West farmed the property until his death in 1909.

At 14, West began pushing trucks at a sawmill owned by the Trinity County Lumber Company. By the time West completed school in the Groveton public schools, he served as foreman of the planer at the Trinity County company and later superintendent of another plant owned by Peter Josserand near Groveton. West gradually accumulated his own timber lands and established the West Lumber Company at Westville, roughly four miles west of Groveton, in the mid-1890s. Westville, named for James West, centered around the West's sawmill and at one point reported a population of one thousand with the community center and church.

In these early days of the developing Texas timber industry, West controlled a substantial part of the timber holdings and bought and developed other lumber mills in East Texas and Louisiana. After Westville, he acquired sites at Bedford and Potomac, twenty miles east of Westville, which offered abundant stands of yellow pine that doubled in value in 1905- 1906. He sold this property later to Lynch Davidson of Houston and began a series of transactions to acquire more property. In 1908 West traded Jesse Jones of Houston all his stock in the National City Bank that he had founded for the Orange Sawmill Company in Orange, Texas. The sawmill processed approximately 125,000 board feet daily and held another 300 million feet of stands along the Sabine River making it one of the largest in operation in Texas at the time. In the same year, West purchased the Hawthorne Lumber Company in Hawthorne, Louisiana, along the Kansas City Southern railroad. This sawmill soon burned, never to be reoperated by West because of the expense of reforestation. (Lumber Trade Journal, January 1910) Later in 1908, West's fortune changed when he acquired from C.L. Smith some 200 million feet of Louisiana long-leaf pine and a sawmill with a capacity of 85,000 daily. Many in the lumber industry considered this tract the finest of his holdings.

James West Senior became known for the size and value of his many timber dealings. His most famous deal occurred in conjunction with Colonel R.C. Duff of Beaumont which is reported as the largest deal ever closed in the lumber industry in Texas. This transaction with William Carlisle & Company of Onalaska, Texas, encompassed more than one billion feet of stumpage, numerous sawmills, and a railroad. The property included 143,000 acres of timber in Polk, Tyler, and Trinity counties, reportedly the most valuable timber land in the state. (Historical Review of Southeast Texas, Vol. II) By the early 1920s, West's lumber companies cut 400,000 feet of lumber each day, operated 24 lumber yards, and employed over 1500. This amounted to approximately 6% of the entire lumber workforce at the height of the lumber industry in Texas.

In February 1910, the Lumber Trade Journal described James West Senior:
The deal brings into renewed prominence a man destined to take front rank with the eminent industrial leaders of the South - James M. West. By his friends and all who know him, Mr. West is regarded as a man in every sense of the word, and as one fitted by nature to assume executive charge of industrial propositions of great magnitude. Big physically, nature endowed him with a capacity and courage unsurpassed by any of his fellow immortals of Texas history. His personal career has been remarkable for its unbroken progress from a humble employee of a sawmill to a place in the front rank of the industrial captains of the period.

T.C. Gooch in Texans and Their State later described West as, " One of the big things in Texas is lumber; one of the big men in lumber is J.M. West."

Besides his interest in lumber, West accurately perceived the need to diversify as the lumber industry began to slow down in the 1920s. One of his first ventures was in the emerging oil industry. West acquired oil and gas holdings in the Pierce Junction and Thompson Fields with his sons and Hugh Roy Cullen by 1928, and later a field in the Clear Lake area. He also eventually headed the West Production Company. Another business venture included acquiring ranches. West owned the 120,000-acre Fort Terrett Ranch in Culberson County and the 209,000-acre Longfellow Ranch in Brewster and Pecos counties. West also owns real estate including the Beatty Building in Houston and Tribune Building in Austin. He maintained a penthouse in the latter.

In 1939, James M. West received an appointment to be chairman of the Texas Highway Commission by Governor W. Lee (Pappy) O'Daniel. The Texas Senate, however, failed to confirm West for the appointment. In response, West purchased the Dallas Journal and Austin Tribune in order to report his side of the controversy.

Jessie Dudley (1871-1953) a native of Washington County, Georgia, married James West in 1897. The couple had three children: James Marion West, Jr., known as "Silver Dollar West," Wesley Wendell West, and Mildred, who later married Frank Lee Hewitt, Jr. In 1905 the West family moved to 2106 Crawford in Houston to be near the center of the West businesses. This c. 1900 Queen Anne house was demolished c. 1943. In the early 1920s, West began to accumulate land in southeast Harris County eventually amounting to approximately 30,000 acres. This became the site of the James and Jessie West Mansion in 1929-30.

James and Jessie West selected Joseph Finger (1887-1953) as the architect of their new home. Finger, an Austrian-born and trained architect came to the United States in 1905. After first settling in New Orleans, in 1908 he moved to Houston. Finger designed some of Houston's finest commercial and institutional buildings between 1920 and 1940. Among his best work are the Houston City Hall, Houston Municipal Airport, Jefferson Davis Hospital, Clark, and Courts Building. All of these used the progressive, modern style of the period. Other more eclectic designs include the Spanish Colonial Revival residence of Wade and Mamie Irvin House at Morgan's Point and the chateauesque design of the Joe Weingarten House in Houston's Riverside Terrace neighborhood. Finger was active in a number of civic, religious, and social groups. He was a member of the American Institute of Architects, the Temple Beth Israel, the Benevolent Paternal Order of Elks, the Concordia Club, and the Glenbrook Country Club. He was 41 years old when he designed the West Mansion, and it was his last work to exemplify the spirit of the 1920s. (Houston Post, 7-4-87) Finger died in 1953 at the age of 66.

Other individuals and companies involved in the construction of the West mansion are Mason C. Coney, a landscape architect from Houston. Wests' own South Texas Lumber Company provided building materials, with mill work done by the Houston Co-Operative Manufacturing Company. Bering-Cortes Hardware Company provided the hardware, except for the ornamental ironwork done by Berger & Son. Southwestern Construction Company constructed the house and Ed Love painted the residence. (Houston Chronicle, 9-21-30)

The Finger's design for the Italian Renaissance villa followed the pattern of the beautiful villas of Italy. (Houston Post, 7-22-28) When constructed, the Italian Renaissance style was rarely used in Texas as more preferred the related Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial. In Houston, the best manifestation of the style was at Rice Institute, widely publicized and known in the Houston area. The Wests also broke from local tradition by building outside of Houston. While mansions were often constructed in rural areas on Long Island or Westchester County, New York, in the 1920s, most large houses in Texas were built on a smaller scale in country club settings. The West Mansion was easily one of the largest houses in Texas during the late 1920s and 1930s and was remarkable in its design and craftsmanship. Stephen Fox, Houston architectural historian, noted that "The exterior of the ...villa is superlative, especially the cast concrete classical decoration."
(1990), while the Houston Architectural Survey (1980) noted the house's Palm Room, "Furniture and fittings were all in the zig-zag moderne style, the finest Art Deco interior to be executed in Houston." Another account called the new house, "the most beautiful residence on the gulf coast between New Orleans and the Rio Grande Valley... No money was spared to make it as comfortable and pleasing as modern science could devise."

The architecture of the West Mansion is extraordinary. The immense, 2-story paneled Living Room with polychromed, stenciled, beamed ceiling, the Renaissance Dining Room, the Library with Grinling Gibbons inspired carvings, the central, divided flight staircase, and the 150-foot enfilade Palm Room to Breakfast Room progression all bespoke the large size and richness of the mansion. The exceptional zig-zag detailing, eleven technicolor and lavishly appointed bathrooms, and modern kitchen and pantry with silver sinks were testimony to the progressive ideas of architects and clients. The multi-colored bathrooms featured iced drinking water and special shower sprays. The stylistic eclecticism might seem extravagant today, but was at that time indicative of broad tastes and interests. The principal rooms were in relatively conventional styles, except for the Palm Room. More modern decor was permissible in game rooms in that era, as seen in the Palm Room and the Art Deco Hunt Room of Montpelier in Virginia.

The mansion served as the centerpiece of a much larger complex including a large car garage, tennis courts, swimming pool, staff quarters, barn and stables, and lavish gardens with a classical pergola. Near the mansion, West built an approximately ten-acre freshwater lake to offset his dislike of the nearby salt water. Across the freshwater lake, James West provided land in 1927 to the Houston and Harris County Girl Scouts to be used as a campsite. Later known as Camp Tejas, Joseph Finger donated his time to design a camp complex. In 1942, after the West family's departure, Humble Oil Company granted exclusive rights to the Girl Scouts to use the pool. (History of Camp Tejas, date unknown) The camp moved in the late 1950s (c. 1959) and Hurricane Carla destroyed most of the buildings in 1961. The camp is believed to have then moved to the property known as Casa Mare or Deepdene (demolished 1992) along Galveston Bay.

The West Mansion, a Harris County landmark since its completion in 1930, remained a family home for less than a decade. The Wests sold most of their property to Humble Oil in 1939 for $8 million and extensive royalties but kept the mansion and surrounding property. Two years later West died while on a business trip in Kansas City, Missouri. His estate reportedly paid over $11 million in federal and $2.6 million in state taxes. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. West moved into Houston leaving the estate intact, including all furnishings. Later reports, stated that Mrs. West removed only a few items and "left with magazines on tables and sheets on beds."(Citizen, April 1987) James West's will stipulated that the mansion never be used as a residence again. Jessie West died in 1953 at 1721 River Oaks Boulevard in Houston. Her front-page obituary noted that she was "A kindly, deeply religious woman," with philanthropic interests through the West Foundation and the Methodist Church.

For three decades the mansion remained unoccupied and largely furnished. Because of the absence of owners, the property fell into disrepair and suffered from vandals. Humble Oil in the meantime developed the surrounding area into the Clear Lake community. In 1961, Humble Oil who had acquired the mansion, donated 21.48 acres to Rice Institute in 1956 and later another 1000 acres for the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in 1961. Rice Institute purchased from Humble Oil another approximately 78 acres in March 1962. The mansion continued to be vacant until 1969 when it was remodeled to be the Lunar Science Institute, renamed the Lunar and Planetary Institute in 1978, for a cost of $580,000. This work included replicating missing tiles and ironwork, restoring paneling and stenciling, and correcting structural problems. The garages and barns were adapted for office space. The gardens were maintained as originally designed.

The Lunar and Planetary Institute provided NASA assistance within the scientific community in interdisciplinary research on lunar, planetary, and terrestrial programs. The Institute offered visiting scholar programs, workshops, seminars, computer programs, and educational publications to promote public awareness of NASA programs and scholarship. It operated as a consortium of the Universities Space Research Association. The Institute occupied the mansion until December 1991.

The James and Jessie West Mansion is believed to be the only home remaining that is associated with the Wests. There is no record of his early Trinity County home and two other houses in Houston are now demolished. Therefore, the West Mansion is most closely associated with the Wests during the time when they held statewide importance. It is eligible under Criterion B in the area of Industry at the state level and primarily associated with James Marion West Senior. The West Mansion is also significant for being one of the few great country estates built during the 1920s in Texas that retains its integrity. The property is also important for being the work of Joseph Finger, one of Houston's premier architects of the early 20th century, and the only property he designed in the Italian Renaissance style. These points make the property eligible under Criterion C for Architecture at the state level.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1994.