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Houston Heights · Texas

The Full Timeline

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1100 Harvard · 1891 to today

One corner of Houston Heights, year by year. Select any entry for the full story and an image of the source.

1891–1929Before the Temple

  1. 1891 The Omaha and South Texas Land Company plats Houston Heights: 1,700 acres of high ground, its streets named for colleges. “Harvard” was aspiration from the first day. more →
  2. 1896 The Heights incorporates as its own city. more →
  3. 1904 The corner is house lots. E. L. Rugg, an Alvin fruit farmer turned Houstonian, makes his home at 1102 Harvard. more →
  4. 1905 An eight-room house with a stable stands at 1100 Harvard, offered furnished at $35 a month. more →
  5. 1908 The corner makes the Chronicle for the first time when a wolf raids a henhouse and eats eighteen hens. more →
  6. 1910 Reagan Lodge No. 1037 is chartered on December 12, the first Masonic lodge in Houston’s suburbs. James Helms carries the charter home from Waco, and the first officers are installed on December 31. more →
  7. 1911 The young lodge meets over the volunteer fire station at 910 Yale Street, next to Dr. Olive’s drugstore. more →
  8. 1912 One year old, the lodge officiates a public cornerstone ceremony for a Baptist church. In November, a Heights judge travels in the honor party escorting Houston’s old Masonic cornerstone to Waco. more →
  9. 1913 When the wreck of the “Owl” train kills engineer John Latchford, Heights Masons carry his pall from his Yale Street home. more →
  10. 1914 With no hall of their own yet, the lodge and its Eastern Star chapter install their officers together at the public playground. more →
  11. 1915 The lodge’s public installation picnic draws “fully 1000 people,” in a town of nine thousand. more →
  12. 1916 A building association incorporates, and the lodge’s first hall rises at Eleventh and Harvard. Its first recorded event is a New Year’s Eve watch party. more →
  13. 1917 The hall enters regular use. Soldiers from Camp Logan are invited guests at the December 31 watch service, and the Grand Lodge grants a special dispensation to confer degrees ahead of schedule on a soldier bound for France. more →
  14. 1918 Worshipful Master W. H. Lynn halts lodge business and marches the brethren to the funeral of Oscar Grubbs, age 21. The Heights votes to join Houston the same year. more →
  15. 1921 Lodge officers are elected directly off a Friday afternoon basket picnic. more →
  16. 1923 A gas explosion at Lawlor’s Cafe on the block injures a worker lighting the water heater. Commerce reached the corner before the cornerstone did. more →
  17. 1925 The lodge lays the cornerstone of John H. Reagan High School, with schoolchildren delivering addresses at the ceremony. more →
  18. 1925–26 Between degree nights the hall belongs to teenagers: Rainbow girls on Saturday afternoons, DeMolay boys in the evenings. more →
  19. 1927 The lodge calls a cornerstone ceremony for a proposed new Heights Masonic Temple. The project waits three more years. more →
  20. 1928 The Houston Heights Garden Club begins staging its flower shows in the hall at Harvard and Eleventh. more →
  21. 1929 Construction bids go out in November. On December 31 the lodge holds its nineteenth-anniversary watch party, the last event in the old hall. more →

1930Building the Temple

  1. Feb 1930 An all-day degree marathon fills the old hall: candidates report at 8:30 a.m., 1 p.m., and 7 p.m., with dinner served at noon. more →
  2. Mar 23, 1930 Both Houston dailies announce a $140,000 lodge building designed by architect Lamar Q. Cato: three stories and a basement, an auditorium with a stage, a library, quarters for the youth orders, and a bowling alley below. more →
  3. 1930 The corner house is not demolished. It is placed on rollers and moved up Harvard Street. more →
  4. Jun 20, 1930 The city issues the building permit, printed for “1101 Harvard,” the wrong side of the street. The building rose at 1100 anyway. more →
  5. Jul 26, 1930 The cornerstone is leveled with full Masonic ceremony under Grand Lodge dispensation. Judge Ewing Boyd, who once rode into Houston on a locomotive cowcatcher, delivers the oration. more →
  6. Fall 1930 The pink Tennessee marble arrives slowly from Knoxville and the finish runs late, for the best possible reason. The Chronicle’s October verdict: “the latest and most imposing structure in Houston Heights.” more →
  7. Dec 1930 The formal opening is planned for December 21. Grand Lodge returns record 855 members; the completed cost is carried at $110,700. more →

1930–1935The Golden Age

  1. 1931 Membership peaks at 894. The Rainbow Girls hold their first public installation in the new hall, and the Garden Club’s spring flower show moves into the exhibition hall. more →
  2. Dec 1932 Houston’s mayor, Walter E. Monteith, helps host a December dance in the temple’s DeMolay ballroom. The orchestra plays from a dais dressed as a small forest, and the punch bowl is frozen around fruit and flowers. more →
  3. 1932 Charter member and longtime secretary James F. Helms dies; his funeral fills the temple’s own auditorium. Helms School carries his name today. more →
  4. 1932, 1934 Six Masonic bodies hold their joint public installations on the temple grounds: picnic at six, ceremony after. more →
  5. 1933 Reagan Chapter of DeMolay is the largest in Texas and a two-time state champion in competitive degree work. more →
  6. 1933 Members mount a public debt drive, team by team and dinner by dinner, and raise more than $57,000. more →
  7. 1933 A Methodist youth group and the Hebrew Temple Club of Reagan High School present the comedy “An Arizona Cowboy” together on the temple stage. more →
  8. 1933 More than 100 couples fill a graduation dance, with a tap dancer performing between songs. more →
  9. 1934 The Rainbow Girls stage an “Old Time Style Show” of 35 vintage costumes, and an August carnival takes over the lawn. more →
  10. 1934 On Easter morning the lodge walks from the temple into Norhill Methodist Church “in a body.” more →
  11. 1934 Eleven Eastern Star chapters, essentially every one in Houston, converge on the temple for a grand matron’s visit. more →
  12. 1933 The Letter Carriers’ auxiliary stages a comedy at the Reagan Masonic Hall, one of dozens of productions in the temple’s golden years. more →
  13. 1935 Frank E. Anderson delivers an address on John H. Reagan in the lodge rooms, the temple’s last recorded oration. more →
  14. 1935 The Depression closes the temple era. The lodge moves to rented quarters at Eighth and Harvard by May and never misses a meeting; the building passes to its lender in August. It serves the neighborhood as a polling place to the very end. more →

1935–1943The Legal Reserve Building

  1. 1936 The directories say vacant; the record says otherwise. Walter Cavender, an 87-year-old pioneer electrical contractor, keeps his shop in the building until his death, and two men give the old temple as their home address that summer. more →
  2. 1938 A Seventh Day Adventist school rents the assembly space, and 3,000 square feet of commercial space is offered to Heights businesses. more →
  3. 1939 Insurance man Lester A. Miller buys the building from Houston National Bank. His Home Life Assurance Company moves in, and the papers begin calling the corner the Legal Reserve Building. more →
  4. 1939 The Mary Jane Studios dance academy takes 7,000 square feet of the old lodge floors. more →
  5. 1940 The corner serves as the “111th Engineers’ Armory,” and the Texas Defense Guard drills where Masons once met. The lodge, meanwhile, buys its future home site on Heights Boulevard for $3,600. more →
  6. 1941 Building superintendent P. H. Obenour, age 70, dies in a fall while watching a work crew from the roof. He had kept the old temple running. more →
  7. 1941 Houston’s Teamsters, Joint Council No. 58, make the building their headquarters. more →
  8. Dec 8, 1941 As Houston reads of Pearl Harbor, the Chronicle reports two safes cracked in the building over the weekend. The Teamsters’ own safe held. more →
  9. 1942 James P. Rogers, a two-term state legislator, is buried from the lodge’s rolls. more →

1943–1965The War Apartments and Midcentury

  1. 1943 Under a seven-year federal war-housing lease, the upper floors become two dozen apartments for war workers. The first classified ad from the new apartments sells off an office desk and a leather swivel chair. more →
  2. 1945 Two lodges book degree work at the temple the same week Japan surrenders. Bank clerk George Jenkins dies at home in the building, and Reagan Lodge conducts his graveside rites. more →
  3. 1946 The city directory lists the building as the “1102 Apartments,” its 24 homes recorded tenant by tenant. more →
  4. 1948 A tenant’s improvised burglar alarm, a door rigged to spill knives and forks, foils a 2:30 a.m. break-in. more →
  5. 1948 The lodge dedicates its own new hall at 1606 Heights Boulevard on December 31, designed by past master L. R. Hayes. Its membership has doubled across the decade. more →
  6. 1949 Woodland Lodge and Heights Lodge carry on Masonic work in the old temple. more →
  7. 1951 A $50,000 commercial addition goes up. Its architect, Arne Engberg, had been chief draftsman for the Empire State Building’s architects; its engineer was Walter P. Moore, whose firm later engineered the Astrodome. more →
  8. 1953 On a single Monday, five Masonic bodies meet at the temple, teenage DeMolay boys included. more →
  9. 1954 Sammy Baugh, charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, opens his insurance company in the shop row. The same month, Rebecca Mullin is born in Apartment 22. more →
  10. 1955 The temple itself serves as the Precinct 30 polling place, and a grocery market is offered for sale at 1100 Harvard. more →
  11. 1956 Southwestern Fidelity announces a $600,000 office tower for the shop row, “the first building of its size in the Heights.” The company moves to Montrose instead, and the strip stands unchanged. more →
  12. 1957 The vacated offices are advertised as “one of Houston’s most beautiful office interiors”: paneled oak and mahogany, wall murals, parking for sixty cars. more →
  13. 1958 The State Highway Department moves into the former insurance offices. more →
  14. 1961 Cotton broker Thomas Howell dies at home in the building, and Reagan Lodge returns once more for the graveside service. more →
  15. 1963 A Knights Templar commandery gives the corner a third name in print: “Melrose Temple.” more →
  16. 1964 A Dallas insurer commissions complete renovation drawings that are never carried out. They remain the earliest detailed architectural portrait of the building, down to the faint outline of the Masonic emblem the draftsmen recorded on the frieze. more →
  17. 1965 The building is offered for sale: three stories of 3,842 square feet each, over a leased shop row. more →

1965–1979The Quiet Years

  1. 1966 Reagan Chapter of DeMolay, founded in 1921, marks its 45th anniversary as Houston’s oldest chapter. more →
  2. 1967 J. W. Chandler, raised in Reagan Lodge, is installed Grand Master of Masons in Texas. The lodge marches up to present his hat. His recorded reply: it still fits. more →
  3. 1969–73 The Masonic column keeps filling. By the early 1970s, more than a dozen bodies list meetings at the Heights Masonic Temple, 11th and Harvard: lodges, chapters, councils, commanderies, and Eastern Star. more →
  4. 1972 A funeral is held inside the temple, with Houston Heights Lodge members serving as pallbearers. In January of the same year, the Grand Lodge announced cornerstone ceremonies at 11th and Harvard; what that notice referred to remains an open research question. more →
  5. 1975 Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” plays at the corner, at what the Chronicle calls “the only ecumenical theater in town.” The DeMolay boys sell $2.50 benefit dinners “in Reagan Temple.” more →
  6. 1977 A Knights Templar commandery still gives its address as 1100 Harvard. more →
  7. 1970s The Heights waits out its unfashionable years. Even then, the house next door’s National Register paperwork locates itself “adjacent to the old Masonic Lodge.” The building never stopped being the landmark. more →

1979–2000Harvard House

  1. 1979 Developer T. S. Terry acquires the property in April. more →
  2. 1981 The name “Harvard House” appears in print, and a teaser ad promises “TOTALLY MODERN LIVING” in a “52 YEAR OLD” structure. more →
  3. 1982 A $3 million condominium conversion begins. The campaign sells exactly what the building is: “ANTIQUITY with modern class, and prestige,” homes with French doors, terraces, and wine cellars, “in the shadows of downtown Houston.” more →
  4. 1984 A retail bank branch operates in the commercial row. more →
  5. 1985 The condominium declaration is filed: fourteen homes, with a gazebo courtyard added to the grounds. Masonic notices still run “In the Temple, 1100 Harvard” that September. more →
  6. 1987–92 The oil bust runs its course through the project’s lenders. A federal workout settles the title in 1992, the units pass to individual owners, and the building comes through intact, as it always has. more →
  7. 1990 A film production chooses the 1100 block of Harvard to stand in for California of seven decades earlier. The corner’s period character was that convincing. more →
  8. 1998 At the lodge’s hall two miles south, the Christmas notice invites the brethren to stop by after dinner “to see our new carpet.” more →

2000–todayThe Modern Era

  1. 2000 The building is renovated, and sales run brisk under the Harvard Place Lofts banner: a four-story foyer with a chandelier, rooftop views of downtown, 13-inch masonry walls, and 12-inch concrete floors between homes. more →
  2. 2001 The campaign’s ad copy: “14 units now being renovated. Pick Colors. Some Ready Now.” more →
  3. 2007 The City of Houston designates the Houston Heights West Historic District around the corner. more →
  4. 2010 Reagan Lodge No. 1037, active to this day, receives an Official Texas Historical Marker at its Heights Boulevard hall. more →
  5. 2013 CNN Money ranks the Heights fourth among big-city neighborhoods in America. The neighborhood caught up to its most imposing building. more →
  6. Today Fourteen homes inside the temple’s bones: pink Tennessee marble at the entrance, steel columns in the masonry, and a faint square and compass above the door, in the right light. more →

Every entry above traces to a documented source: the Houston Post, Houston Chronicle, and other Texas newspapers; Grand Lodge of Texas Proceedings; Houston city directories; the 1964 architectural drawings; and the collections of the Houston History Research Center. Source notes for the narrative are in the full history. This is an independent historical project, not affiliated with Reagan Lodge No. 1037 (active today at 1606 Heights Blvd.) or the Harvard House Condominium Association.