Paul Building

The Paul-Republic Building at 1018 Preston presents a good example of early twentieth-century Chicago School commercial architecture in Houston and stands as one of the city's oldest skyscrapers. Located near the county courthouse, the structure provided offices for many of the city's most prominent attorneys, and for a brief period, served as the meeting place of the United States District Court for Houston. The building remains within an area becoming engulfed by Houston's rapidly expanding central business district. Many similar buildings of the same vintage in the vicinity have been razed to allow the construction of modern, high-rise structures. As a result, the Paul-Republic Building represents an important architectural and historical link to Houston's turn-of-the-century development.

Allen Paul, a local realtor, commissioned the Dallas-Fort Worth architectural firm of Sanguinett and Staats to design an office building near the county courthouse.
Sanguinett and Staats was a popular firm throughout Texas during the first two decades of this century. Displaying a wide diversity of styles, many of their buildings are listed on, or nominated to, the National Register and include the Anderson Building in Fort Worth, the Wilson Building in Dallas, Prairie School, and Neo-Classical Revival residences in Dallas' Swiss Avenue Historic District, and several houses along Courtlandt Place in Houston. For the Paul Building, the architects employed a Commercial Style design highlighted with terra-cotta ornamentation. Upon completion, the structure stood as one of the largest commercial buildings in Houston.

The original town survey reserved the block now occupied by the Paul- Republic Building for the county courthouse, but prior to 1873, the courthouse relocated one block diagonally to the northeast of its initial site, thus allowing the original square to be developed for commercial use. By 1907. Allen Paul erected his eight-story building at the northeast corner of the block, just across the street from the courthouse.

The proximity of the Paul Building to the county courthouse encouraged numerous attorneys and other law-related professionals to locate in the structure. The building's significance to the legal trade increased when, in 1910, the United States District Court convened on the second floor, and the U. S. District Attorney and Marshall, along with jury rooms, were located on the third floor. Early photographs of the building illustrate the desire of many of Houston's prominent attorneys to maintain offices in the Paul Building. The names of these lawyers were painted on many of the windows and were clearly visible from the street.

Other tenants through the years included the Kloppenburg and Walker Drug Company (Paul served as President and Ross Sterling, later Governor of the state, was Vice-President), the Galveston-Dallas News, oil companies, accountants, realtors, dentists, life insurance companies, and the Y. M. C. A. The structure's name has been changed several times since its completion in 1907. Originally called the Paul Building, the edifice became known as the Hoffman Building in 1918. Two years later, the Turnbow Oil and Refining Company rented office space on the second floor, and the structure became known as the Turnbow Building. It obtained its present name, the Republic Building, in 1923.

Like so many other similar buildings in the area, the structure has been neglected in recent years and has remained virtually unoccupied since 1970. The current owners, recent purchasers of the building, plan to rehabilitate it and return it to its position as an important office building near the courthouse.