Joseph P. Carter Home

About 1911 this neighborhood was among Houston's most desirable, the location of the homes of many of Houston’s business elite. Houston is now known as an oil town, but many of the oilmen in Houston got their start in the lumber business, and when Spindletop brought an oil boom in 1901, it was lumber money that fueled the expansion of their wealth into petroleum. Many of these lumbermen lived in this section of Main Street.

14 March 2013: No structures remain from the century before, and the vacant lots remaining stayed empty for many years. By 2013 the area had come to be called Midtown and multi-level residential complexes began to fill with new residents. Once again the neighborhood is a desirable place to live, but at a much higher density.

6-25-2018: The multifamily apartment community at this intersection is being built at this intersection by Camden Property Trust, a Houston-based company that owns and operates 158 properties across the U.S. containing more than 50,000 apartment homes. 

​1. 1004 McGowen: Off to the left facing McGowen was the home of Almon Cotton (1856-1922), real estate agent; 2. 2609 Main: Samuel H. Jackson (1865-1940), real estate agent and oil man from Caldwell, Burleson County, TX; 3. 2615 Main: Morris Kuminir (1879-1924), Jewish immigrant from Russia, owner of a tailor shop at 418 Travis between Preston and Prairie; 4. 2619 Main: William Byrd Jones (1851-1917), president of Jones-Brewster Co., dealers in eggs, butter etc with an office warehouse near Produce row at 104-106 Travis; 2703 Main: Just past the intersection of Dennis Street at 2701 Main at Dennis, here shrouded by the canopy of trees, was the residence of the residence of Fannie Wolf, whose son, Jules Wolf, then a clerk at Levy's, and a subject in this series; 5. 2908 Main: Jesse Holman Jones residence, who was at this time (1911) president of Jesse H. Jones Lumber Co., president of South Texas Lumber Co, president of Southern Loan & Investment Co, president of The Houston Chronicle Building Co., vice-president and director of the Union National Bank, vice-president of Main & Congress Realty Co., with a private office filling the entire the 9th floor of the Chronicle Building; 6. 2702 Main: 2nd Presbyterian Church, 1904; 7. 2620 Main: The obscure house just north of the church was the residence of James Marion West, Sr. (1871-1941), one of the richest men in Texas. At one time owning 700,000 acres of ranch-land in Texas, his family moved from Wayne County, MS to Trinity County, TX when he was 9 years old. At 13 he quit school and entered the lumber business, made a success of himself at an early age and moved to Houston. 

​In addition to the lumber business, ranching, and oil, he was a banker, real estate developer, and publisher (The Dallas Journal, The Austin Tribune). In 1930 he had Joseph Finger build him a 17,000 sq. ft. mansion in Clear Lake, one of the largest homes in the state. The building later became the Nasa Lunar and Planetary Institute (1969-1991) and since 2006 is owned by Hakeem Oajuwon. West was on the board of directors at Texas Tech College, and West Hall on that campus is named for him. James West died in 1941 on a business trip to Kansas City and is buried in Forest Park Cemetery, Westheimer; 8. 2610 Main: The white house just past the corner mansion was the home of John Q. Tabor (1863-1939), an oil man, one time manager of Magnolia Oil Company, Vice President of the Houston Chamber of Commerce and the State National Bank. Originally from Bryan, TX, he moved to Sacramento in 1916 where he died in 1939. His ashes are interred at Hollywood Cemetery; 9. 2602 Main: Residence of Joseph Presley Carter (1872-1946), president of Attoyac River Lumber Company, with tracts along the river bottom lands between Nacogdoches and Shelby Counties in East Texas; also president of the Carter Lumber Company, his legacy from his brother Samuel Fain Carter (1857-1928), president of The Lumbermans National Bank. Samuel at this time was building the 16-story Carter Building at Main and Rusk, Houston’s first true high-rise building. They were the sons of John Quincy Adams Carter (1830-1894) and Mildred Ann Richards (1835-1908) from Huntsville, AL who moved to Sherman, TX in the 1850’s, then to Colorado County where J. P. grew to adulthood. He married Pearl Guinn, born 26 September 1873 in Leesville, Gonzales County, TX. By then S. F. Carter had become a prosperous East Texas lumberman and banker, and J. Presley joined him at Houston in the family business. J. P. Carter lived in the home from 1910 until 1920 when the family moved into the Rice Hotel, then to the Savoy Apartments in 1923 where he lived until his death there in 1946. Pearl died 9 November 1959, they are buried in Forest Park Cemetery in Houston.

Within a decade and a half, other developments such as Montrose, Courtlandt Place, Westmoreland, and above all, River Oaks, began to rob the neighborhood of its citizens. The area fell into decline and eventually all of the mansions in this district on Main Street were demolished.