President's House

The President's House (now the Heritage House) is located on the campus of Texas A&M University-Commerce, a historically state-supported university in Commerce, Texas. (Texas A&M University-Commerce is the second largest campus in the Agricultural and & Mechanical University System.) This modified Georgian Revival house was constructed in 1927 during the administration of Dr. Samuel Whitely, the third president of the institution. It retains a high degree of integrity and is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places for its association with the history of Texas A&M University-Commerce in the area of education, and architecture as an excellent example of Georgian Revival style, both at the local level.

Professor William L. Mayo, a Kentucky-born educator who had taught school in Pecan Gap, Texas, briefly in 1888-89, chartered Mayo's College in Cooper, Texas, in 1889, as a private proprietary teacher's institution. Like many other small struggling private colleges of the time, Mayo's College depended on multipurpose administration/classroom room buildings and wood frame dormitories. The building that served as the first home of the college was a two-story frame T- shaped structure with a large front porch and bell tower. A disastrous fire in 1894 burned it to the ground. This presented Professor Mayo with the opportunity of moving the school to a new location. Encouraged by the liberal offer of money and land from the citizens of Commerce, he opened the doors of the school, now called East Texas Normal College, in downtown Commerce in September 1894.

The next year the college moved to a ten-acre site southwest of the downtown area. College Hall, the first building constructed on the Commerce campus, with its auditorium, classrooms, library, physics and chemistry labs, served as the principal education facility. Later Mayo added several wooden dormitories for the growing student population. On January 28, 1907, disaster struck when College Hall burned to the ground. With help from the citizens of Commerce, Mayo replaced the building with a new brick structure to house administration offices, classrooms, and an auditorium. On January 7, 1911, yet another fire hit the college. This time the flames destroyed the three oldest dormitories on the west side of campus. Altogether, the citizens of Commerce subscribed to funding three separate times to underwrite the costs of reconstruction after the fires, as well as the construction of the campus's original buildings. Later, when the state assumed control of the college in 1917, most of the new buildings on campus were constructed of brick and concrete and based on standard architectural plans. These buildings were separated enough to prevent fires from spreading easily.

Despite these setbacks, ETNC became the largest private teachers college in Texas, offering both regular courses during the fall, winter, and spring semesters, and a special normal-institute session in the summer for teacher certification. Mayo's dream of providing education for aspiring teachers in northeast Texas in the 1880s and 1890s coincided with plans by the state of Texas to promote and finance public schools throughout the state. The demand for trained teachers- especially in the rural schools of Texas- skyrocketed.

In 1917, because of poor health and a desire to ensure the continuation of his normal college, Mayo wanted the state to buy the school. He and his influential friends convinced the legislature and governor to purchase the college for $100,000 from the Mayo family. The Board of Regents of State Normal Colleges appointed Randolph B. Binnion, first assistant state superintendent of public instruction in the State Department of Education, president of the now-renamed East Texas State Normal College. Binnion moved quickly to upgrade the rapidly deteriorating physical plant and to find funds to construct new classroom buildings, a heating plant, and a library. In addition, Binnion sought state appropriations to construct a president's house on campus. The main argument in support of a president's house an argument used persistently by both Binnion and his successor Dr. Samuel Whitley was that all the other state institutions of higher learning in Texas had houses for their presidents.

On December 4, 1924, Binnion resigned to become provost at Peabody College. Samuel Whitley, dean of the college, became president. Whitley had served as interim president in 1923-1924 when Binnion was temporarily absent working on a master's degree. The college was renamed East Texas State Teachers College in 1923. Although some surviving ETNC bulletins indicate that limited graduate-level work was offered as early as 1912-1914, ET began offering a regular program leading to masters' degrees in 1936 (and later doctoral degrees in 1962 under President James G. Gee.) During World War II, President Whitely supported programs to train Army and Navy servicemen and members of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on campus. A number of students and faculty enlisted and served in the Armed Forces of the United States during the war. During Whitley's tenure, the college's physical plant expanded with the addition of the Education Building, the Library, the Hall of Science, Mayo Hall (a men's dormitory and cafeteria), East Hall (a women's dormitory), and the remodeling of several other buildings. In addition, he finally succeeded in getting $15,000 appropriated by the state legislature for the construction of a president's house.

Two well-known builders, George Lindsey and Roy Kilmer of neighboring Greenville, Texas, were selected as architects for the home. Kilmer, born in Gypsum, Kansas, on February 28, 1889, received his degree in architecture from Kansas State College (now University) in 1910 and moved to Hunt County around 1918. He worked for several years with Lindsey, who was older and licensed, on buildings requiring a licensed architect. Together they designed the Kavanaugh United Methodist Church, Greenville YMCA, the City Library, the Washington Hotel, St. Williams Catholic Church, Greenville High School, and the Greenville National Bank Building, as well as numerous office buildings, private residences, and school buildings. Kilmer became the 494th architect licensed in Texas on January 8, 1938.

Foundation work began on the President's House in late September 1927, and the Whitleys moved in on December 27, 1927, on their twenty-third wedding anniversary. The house originally had a kitchen, two bathrooms, a living room with a fireplace, a dining room, a pantry, and several bedrooms upstairs. There were five exterior doors on the first floor and one exterior door upstairs leading to the balcony over the west side porch. There were two staircases, one off the main entrance and the other between the pantry and the southeast room, leading up to the landing and the upstairs bedrooms and bath.

The house had a black iron railing that went from the porch toward the porte cochere on the east side, and an iron rail extended across the front of the porch to the northeast corner of the porch. A sidewalk went across the front of the house and around the west side of the door. The house was heated with steam heat from the old Heating Plant and had 1/1 double-hung windows with screens. A curving concrete sidewalk went from Circle Drive to the front door and a curving concrete driveway extended from the drive through the porte cochere to the garage, but did not extend to the street beyond. Several years after the completion of the house, Whitley put green shutters on the north (primary) façade.

Other than the Heating Plant directly to the east, the President's House was the only building on the south side of the campus. Industrial Hall, the Gymnasium, the Women's Building, Old Main, and the Training School were all on the north side of campus, while the Education Building, completed in 1925, bridged the north and south sides of the campus between the President's House and Industrial Hall. South of campus was open land with only a few private residences. Although many of the buildings constructed on campus in the 1920s and 1930s were faced with the same red brick as the President's House, no others were in the Georgian Revival style.

Many of the celebrations and activities of the school Fête, training school drills, special programs, and class photographs occurred in front of the Education Building and the President's House. After the Library was built on the southeast side of campus, graduating seniors assembled there and walked past the President's House on the way to the Education Building auditorium for commencement exercises. Most of the women's clubs in Commerce at one time or another held meetings in the house, and the Whitleys held dinners and socials there.

Entertainment for the Whitley family also meant hosting outside visitors to the campus in their house, especially as Commerce lacked nice hotels and restaurants. The first notable guest to stay overnight was John Phillip Sousa, who gave two concerts on campus on November 17, 1928. Miss Marjorie Moody, who sang soprano with the Sousa band, and one of the first female singers to travel with a band, stayed in the Whitley's house. Mrs. Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt and the first woman cabinet member, was a houseguest on December 3, 1935. She stayed in the upstairs southwest corner guest room. Other famous politicians, educators, members of the Board of Regents of the State Teachers Colleges, entertainers, bankers, and religious leaders stayed overnight in the President's House. Even those notables who did not stay overnight were often invited to visit the Whitleys for lunch or just a social call.

During the Whitley years, the house underwent only minor repairs and alterations. Mr. E.L. Hawley of the Fake Furniture Company in Dallas redecorated and refurbished the interior in the summer of 1944. The East Texan, the school newspaper, gave a detailed description of the house after the changes:

The basic color is rose and the harmonizing colors are all pastels. The living room walls are a soft shade of blue-gray, the dining room walls are rose and the president's study has apple-green walls. The draperies are a large design of deep rose, maroon, and white with a touch of green. The rugs are rose. There are some beautiful paintings and copies of the known pictures. One of the pictures in the living room is the "New England Winter Scene by Courier." Another is "For a Song," painted from the poem by Omar Khayyam.'

In 1946, Whitley died of a heart attack while on a hunting trip to East Texas. Dr. Arthur C. Ferguson, dean of the college, took over the reins of the institution until he reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy in 1947. Because his tenure was so short, he never formally occupied the house. Dr. James G. Gee, who came from Sam Houston State Teachers College to assume the duties of president, followed him. Continuing in the tradition of the Whitleys, Dr. Gee invited commencement orators and guest speakers on campus to come over to the house for a visit or lunch. The reception for graduating seniors and their families continued to be held at the house under the Gee administration. Like the Whitleys earlier, President Gee and his wife held dinners and receptions for faculty at the home.

The Gees made some minor changes in the appearance of the President's House. They had the ironwork and shutters painted white; and had a large brick wall built on the back southwest side of the lot to provide privacy. The wall connected to a hedge on the far west and north sides of the lot forming an enclosed area west of the house. Window air conditioners were installed, and about 1949 or 1950 large distinctive white awnings were added on the east, west, and south sides to protect the interior from the hot summer sun.

Gee is credited with the further expansion of the school's physical plant during the invasion of the returning veterans who were taking advantage of the G. I. Bill of Rights. He also expanded the course offerings to include more liberal arts and sciences courses and upgraded the academic credentials of the faculty by insisting that those without an earned doctorate return to graduate school to get their terminal degree. In 1957, in recognition of the expanding curriculum, the school was renamed simply East Texas State College, and in 1965 became East Texas State University. Historian Donald Reynolds has noted that "By the mid-Sixties, as Gee approached the mandatory retirement age of seventy, he could look back on his nineteen years as president with a good deal of satisfaction." He also transformed the appearance of the campus with the construction of new classroom buildings and dormitories.

In 1966 Dr. Whitney Halladay, the final university president to reside in the President's House, took over the reins of the school. Halladay reorganized the administrative structure of the university into three separate colleges. He also expanded degree programs and added new services for students. ETSU continued substantial post-WW II growth through the late 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s. Federal support for the construction of dormitories and classroom buildings fueled the expansion of campus facilities westward and across Highway 24/50. Under Halladay's administration, the University built a new President's House south of Commerce on the highway. The Halladays moved out of the old home and to the new one in May 1968.

After some modest renovations, including new carpeting, and paneling, the Alumni Office moved into the former guest bedroom and the dining room on the first floor of the President's House. Dr. Jarrell Gray, Secondary and Higher Education faculty and head of the student teaching program, his secretary, and a student assistant occupied the two largest former bedrooms on the second floor. The Department of Education Administration took up quarters in other parts of the house. In 1970 these offices moved to other buildings and the living and dining rooms became a faculty lounge. The Creative Services department subsequently used the house as offices for retired university administrators and as the Honors Program office and graduate student library.

By the late 1980s general neglect and rough use by students and faculty had left the house in a state of disrepair. At about the same time, alumni and staff proposed turning the house into a heritage center for use by alumni, the community, and visitors. In 1989 the Heritage Center Subcommittee of the A&M University-Commerce Centennial Steering Committee recommended that the President's Old House (as it was called by then) be restored to its early 1930s appearance. Gary and Sandra Fernandez, alumni, donated a grant of $250,000 to partially cover the costs of restoring the structure and grounds to their original appearance. Help from Friends of the University supplemented Fernandez's gift to complete the $500,000 project. The award-winning architectural firm of Lake and Flato, of San Antonio, oversaw the restoration.

Work began in late 1993 and was completed in 1994, in time to celebrate the centennial of the College in Commerce. To emphasize the university's heritage, the structure was renamed the Heritage House. Today it is used for receptions, special dinners, and meetings on a restricted basis, with the Development Office occupying offices on the second floor. It is also a venue for displaying university and northeast Texas historical memorabilia. The University acquired a mirror, teacart, teapot, and dining room furniture used during the Samuel Whiney tenure from the Mary Lou Whitney estate. Other original furnishings are being sought. The President's House is one of three structures surviving from the 1920s and is the second oldest extant building on campus. It was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1997.