The War Apartments and Midcentury · 1943–1965
Sammy Baugh sets up in the shop row
1954
From the source
From “Sammy Baugh Is Barbershop Singer,” Morris Frank’s column:
“In between songs the likeable Avery Hall is also vice-chairman of the board and agency director of Southwestern Fidelity Insurance Company.
“And also in between songs and being associate coach of Hardin-Simmons University, Sammy Baugh is president of Southwestern Fidelity Insurance Company.”
Houston Chronicle, January 26, 1955, Section B, p. 7. Research archive.
The resume behind the barbershop harmony: TCU All-American, sixteen seasons with the Washington Redskins, and a 1943 year in which he led the entire NFL in passing, punting, and interceptions at once, a triple no one has matched since. In 1963 Baugh would enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame in its seventeen-man charter class. In 1954 he was president of an insurance startup above a Heights pharmacy.
Southwestern Fidelity Life was licensed March 26, 1954, with combined capital and surplus of $250,000, its offices at 207 E. 11th in the building’s shop row. The company line, UN-6107, doubled as the leasing number for the apartments upstairs, so a caller might reach a Hall of Famer’s office about a two-room flat. Chairman Linus Hardin co-owned Baugh’s 6,400-acre ranch near Rotan, and Baugh ran the company between Heights visits, ranch work, and coaching duties in Abilene.
The company outgrew the corner fast, moving to Montrose in 1957, and the lease ad for the vacated suite made a startling claim for a shop row: “one of Houston’s most beautiful office interiors,” paneled oak and mahogany, wall murals, parking for sixty cars. The ad’s photographs are among the only period interior images of the building yet found. And in the same March the company arrived, the city birth register recorded Rebecca Mullin, born upstairs in Apartment 22.
The source
