​The Simon Gugenheim House

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Marker Text: This structure was built at 1101 North Chaparral for Simon and Lila Belle (Soloman) Gugenheim. Simon Gugenheim (1861-1942) was a native Texan who came to Corpus Christi in 1882 with forty dollars in his pocket and remained to become wealthy. He and a friend formed the Gugenheim and Cohn Drygoods Co. In 1891, the year of his marriage, he acquired a great deal of property when he helped rescue the city's economy during a recession in 1896, and later was a successful investor in the petroleum industry. The Gugenheims had this house built about 1900. They moved into a modest apartment and sold their home in 1924. Among their philanthropies was a gift of four lots on South Broadway as the site for a YMCA building, where Gugenheim's portrait was hung. Their Victorian house of the early 1900s was moved to its present site during a period of city growth.
​      The turret on this house survived all others in the domestic architecture of the city. The builder adorned the house with bay windows; a lunette in the front pediment; and gables faced with shingles; ornamenting the porches with columns, brackets, and banisters, and with cornices displaying wooden beads, spindles, lattices, and other Victorian gingerbread. (1976) 

Marker No: 6319

Texas Historic Landmark

National Register of Historic Places

Aluminum 27 x 42 Subject Marker

Geographic: 27.806000,-97.395042

Location: 1513 North Chaparral, Corpus Christi