Clear skies. Low 72F. Winds light and variable..
Clear skies. Low 72F. Winds light and variable.
The Skipper Home at 1402 Texas 31 is included on this year’s Landmarks of Longview Architectural Tour.
8 Covington Drive, a home on the Landmarks of Longview Architectural Tour, is pictured Tuesday.
11 Covington Drive is one of 20 homes on this year’s Landmarks of Longview Architectural Tour.
39 Covington Drive on Tuesday September 20, 2022. (Michael Cavazos/News-Journal Photo)
507 E. Melton Street on Tuesday.
The Skipper Home at 1402 Texas 31 is included on this year’s Landmarks of Longview Architectural Tour.
8 Covington Drive, a home on the Landmarks of Longview Architectural Tour, is pictured Tuesday.
11 Covington Drive is one of 20 homes on this year’s Landmarks of Longview Architectural Tour.
39 Covington Drive on Tuesday September 20, 2022. (Michael Cavazos/News-Journal Photo)
507 E. Melton Street on Tuesday.
History buffs, architecture lovers and design enthusiasts are in for a treat at Saturday’s 22nd annual Landmarks of Longview Architectural Tour sponsored by the Gregg County Historical Museum.
The event will be held in new fashion this year as attendees will be chauffeured to various historical homes in a charter bus. Museum Executive Director Lindsay Loy said the change was made after COVID-19 made it difficult to find homeowners who would be willing to open their doors for the public to tour.
“People are still a little uncomfortable opening their home with COVID,” she said.
To circumvent health concerns, attendees on this past year’s tour visited commercial structures that provided a more open environment for them to tour, Loy said. While attendees would previously drive at their leisure to each house, this year they will be taken to the destinations together, she said.
“We decided to try the bus tour so we could still offer the Landmarks of Longview and have a safe alternative,” Loy said.
This year’s focus is “Homes of the Oil Boom Era.”
About 20 homes will be featured on the tour that will leave from the historical museum on Fredonia Street at 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Saturday, although Loy said Tuesday that tickets only are available for the 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. tours.
Each tour is set to last about an hour-and-a-half. The tours will make the same stops, so attending a different time slot won’t mean a different experience, Loy said.
Champagne and sweets will be served on the bus along with additional refreshments inside the museum that will be available before and after tours, she said. Door prizes such as gift cards to local restaurants also will be offered.
The first stop of the tour is the Skipper Home at 1402 Texas 31, and it’s the only stop where attendees will be able to enter the home and tour inside, Loy said. According to information from the museum, Barney Anuel and Mary Skipper built the large Spanish Colonial Revival estate in 1936.
Loy described the Skipper Home as having marbled mantles, intricate inlaid tiles, gilded mirrors and several chandeliers, one of which is from a house that composer Ludwig van Beethoven lived in.
Bill Crouch, owner of the Skipper Home, purchased it with his wife in 1994. The couple loved old houses and decided to start restoring it shortly after, Loy said.
After the Skipper Home, attendees will board the bus and head to the Covington Neighborhood where they’ll make stops and learn about numerous homes from a guide, Loy explained. The tour will round out at property at 507 E Melton St. which the museum describes as “one of the most iconic and beautiful in Longview.”
The Oil Boom-era was chosen for this year’s tour because not many people know the history of how it impacted Longview, Loy said.
“I think by talking about some of the historic homes we get to learn a little more about our history,” she said. “And by seeing our homes, you can see the history from different times. We’ve never really done something on the 1930s oil boom. Not a lot of people know about how that shaped Longview.”
When she began picking homes to feature, Loy said she had a hard time narrowing down the options because there were so many to choose from. Ultimately, she decided to include homes that were more to the south of Marshall avenue.
The Covington subdivision, set around a horseshoe-shaped street, also is featured on Saturday’s tour.
It was named Surrey Place by its developer, Dolly Northcutt. Through the early 1930s, the houses would be homes to Longview’s most influential residents, according to the museum. During the past 80-plus years, many homes have been updated, modernized and renovated.
In an effort to highlight all of the historical homes of the Oil Boom-era in Longview, Loy is considering doing a part two to the tour next year that would focus on homes to the north side of Marshall Avenue, she said.
Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online at gregghistorical.org or at the museum.
I'm Yoleyne Romero and my beat includes city/county government. I'm a graduate from The University of Texas at Tyler with a Bachelor's degree in Mass Communication. I have a dog named Okami that provides endless sunshine in my life.
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