Mildred Buildings

The Mildred Buildings were designed and built in 1929-30 by the Austin Co. of Texas, Dallas, Texas, for $700,000. The Mediterranean Revival-style complex of apartment building, store building and garage was commissioned by Miles Frank Yount, a wealthy Spindletop oilman. They were named for his 8-year-old adopted daughter. Mildred was said to be the wealthiest girl in the United States when she inherited $12 million in Spindletop oil resources at the age of fourteen. The building named for her is an excellent example of the elegant structures erected in Beaumont in the late 1920's and early 1930's due to the deep oil discovery at Spindletop by the Yount- Lee Oil Co. in 1925. This oil discovery caused Beaumont's most rapid growth period and had a profound influence on the nation's economy as a whole. The buildings still maintain a high occupancy rate and prestigious reputation. It is an outstanding example of planned area development with the buildings and transition spaces thoroughly integrated with and related to each other.

Yount's life history is a classic tale of a poor farm boy becoming one of the country's wealthiest men. Miles Frank Yount was the eldest son of an Arkansas farmer, Joseph Nathaniel, and his wife Hattie Minerva Yount. After Joseph Yount's death, nine- year-old Miles Frank had to quit school to work on the farm.

By 1897 he had left the family farm to work with an irrigation crew on a rice farm near Beaumont. Around the turn of the century he became interested in Spindletop oil stories. He talked to oil men and studied drilling methods. By 1909 he had launched his first drilling venture in the South Lake Oil Field. Yount was enjoying modest financial success when he and T. P. Lee, a financier from Houston, founded the Yount-Lee Oil Co.
The two men were certain that the rich Spindletop Oil Field hadn't been depleted during its first boom at the turn of the century. By 1925 the first Yount-Lee well. in the Spindletop Field was producing 4,500 barrels of oil. Millions of barrels of oil were drained from deeper sands in the once nearly abandoned field. Mr. Yount built a $3 million tank farm for oil storage and constructed oil terminals and dock facilities to handle oil exports.

As his fortune in oil grew, Yount turned to other interests. About the time that he built the Mildred Buildings, he founded the Spindletop Stables with the finest show horses available and established Yount Jersey Farm on Calder Rd. stocked with purebred cattle. He collected priceless violins, books, tapestries and rugs. He maintained a summer home in Manitou, Colorado. Rock from Manitou quarries was brought to Beaumont by Yount to construct the Temple to the Brave in Pipkin Park, and for the mausoleum where his body was interred after his sudden death from a heart attack. His oil interests were reportedly sold for $46 million after his death.