Person:Noble Birge (1)

Birge House, Capt. Noble Allan Texas Historical Commission http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/shell-county.htm

The Capt. Noble Allan Birge House is an unusual example of a transitional Queen Anne/Colonial Revival dwelling noteworthy for its exaggerated Classical detailing. Located in a residential area opposite smaller houses largely built by other members of the Birge family, the Capt. Noble Birge House is prominently sited on a large corner lot. A recent restoration removed most minor additions and modifications of the 1940s and 1950s.

The Capt. N.A. Birge House is a large, two-and-one-half story, wood frame dwelling with beveled-edge clapboard siding and one-over-one windows. The massing of the structure is typically Queen Anne, with large central block covered by a pyramidal roof. Two pedimented bays project from the east side of the house, while another occurs on the rear. The asymmetrical main facade includes a projecting, two-story, gabled portico with plain returns. As with other gable ends of the house, this one features a Queen Anne window, modillions, and a beaded swag and roundel above the window. The gabled portico is supported by two over-sized wooden columns with Scamozzi capitals. The wide, first-story veranda extends across the entire front of the house and wraps around both sides for a distance of sixteen feet. A second-story balcony extends across the right (east) front of the house and wraps back on the right for sixteen feet. The veranda and balcony are supported by small columns (turned posts) eight feet high.

The large, eight-foot front entry door with two side windows is centered between the columns of the portico directly below a balcony window. Above the veranda to the left of the portico is a large, finely detailed, second- story window with segmental arch set into the roof as a dormer with consoles, modillions, and urns. Centrally, a narrow dormer window with hipped roof projects from the third floor. All third-floor dormer windows and gable ends, except for the rear gable, have finials.

On the left or west side of the house is another gable, this one with a pair of Queen Anne windows, a carved panel, and modillions. The beveled, or angled, southern corner of the western projecting bay has an angled corner window on both the first- and second-floor levels. A small, third- floor dormer with window, identical to the front dormer, faces west. These two dormers are equidistant from the southern corner of the roof.

The rear wing of the house, extending beyond the west gable, was originally of only one story, but now has a very early second-story addition. The rear gable on this addition is plain. Projecting from the rear or north side of the house (and not visible from the front) are later, single- story additions: a rear breakfast room was added in 1955- 56, and a small water closet in 1984. Both remain.

The right or east side of the house features two nearly identical, gabled, two-story bay wings. The two-story bay towards the rear extends slightly beyond the other, but both have identical double windows on each floor, including the third level. The gable ends have complete pediments, Queen Anne modillions, carved panels, and tin finials.

Inside, the Birge House contains many of its original chandeliers, carved door and window-frame moldings, and ornate fireplace mantels. The floor plan is simple, consisting of a front entry hall from which the front stairs ascend, a large parlor to the left (west) of the entry, a large living room straight ahead, and a dining room to the left of the living room and adjoining the parlor. To the back of the dining room are the pantry and kitchen, while behind the living room and to the right of the kitchen are the back hall, water closet, back stairs, and guest bedroom with bath. Originally, four bedrooms and a bathroom were on the second floor. Presently there are four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a storage and laundry room. Wide, milled molding of stained yellow pine surrounds windows and doors. Baseboards are wide, milled, stained yellow pine. Four mantels (maple, walnut, mahogany, and oak) decorate coal fireplaces in the entry hall, parlor, dining room, and living room, and all vent to a common main chimney.

On the second floor, two oak mantels decorate coal fireplaces which use the same main chimney. On the front stairs are two original, Queen Anne windows with stained glass that are identical in dimensions to the six windows with clear glass in the gable ends of the third floor. The dining room has decorative, stained, intersecting beams of yellow pine, while the floors are heart of pine. Like almost all homes in Sherman built at that time, wallpaper was glued to canvas-covered ceiling and walls, which now have plasterboard covered with appropriate Victorian reproduction wallpapers. Interior doors (eight feet high on the first floor and seven feet six inches high on the second) have five panels each and are made of stained yellow pine. The Birge House was one of the first in the area to be built with electrical wiring, and many original, refinished, electrical wall sconces remain. Original doors, moldings, baseboards, mantels, dining-room ceiling beams, hear-of-pine flooring, and electrical fixtures all remain, although much of the woodwork was once painted over. Happily, the woodwork has recently been stripped of all paint, stained, and refinished as it was originally. In the entry hall, parlor, living and dining rooms, the original flooring was covered around 1900 by attractive, narrow mitered oak flooring. All the floors have recently been refinished.

The Capt. Noble Allan Birge House, built in 1896, is significant not only by reason of its impressive and flamboyant Queen Anne/Colonial Revival architecture (few examples exist in Sherman), but also because of its historical association with one of Sherman's earliest and greatest industrial developers. Capt. Birge (1832-1902), who built the house, established what is said to have been one of the largest and best-known cotton brokerage firms in the South: Sherman's Birge-Forbes Co. He also founded other cotton-related industries locally, including a compress company and cotton oil mills. Birge fathered thirteen children, eight of whom subsequently built their homes nearby. The children continued their father's successful businesses, and the Birge family remains synonymous with Sherman's cotton and cottonseed oil industries to this day.

The first reference found regarding N.A. Birge in Texas is recorded in the 1860 Marion County census. He is listed as being, "28, male, born in Connecticut and has the occupation of Sheriff." He was the first elected sheriff of Marion County. At this time, Birge also owned a livery stable connected to the old Central Hotel (now Excelsior House) in 1861-1863. He was a captain in the Confederate Army, serving as brigade quartermaster in northern Louisiana in 1863. In 1866, Capt. Birge was one of the incorporators in the Henderson, Marshall, Jefferson Railroad Co. And in 1873 an incorporator of the Lake City Navigation Co. Formed to open and improve the navigation of Big Cypress Bayou.

Between 1860 and 1874, N.A. Birge was a prominent merchant and civic leader. He acquired many lots and parcels of land, buying and selling as a real-estate agent. During this time he built a house in Jefferson that is presently on the National Register: the Beard House, listed in 1970. In 1874 Birge sold that house for $6,500 and moved with his wife and six children by covered wagon to Sherman, Texas.

After living for three years on a farm south of Sherman, Birge purchased ten acres in the Fairview Addition, an area just west of the city limits at that time. Here in 1877 Birge built a home which was destroyed on May 15, 1896, by the Great Sherman Tornado. The present house was constructed on the same site in the summer of 1896, and was owned by Birge descendants until 1969. Though the house contains many typical Victorian-period details, the massively columned portico indicates that the designer was keenly aware of the newly evolving Colonial Revival style. John Tulloch, a prolific Scottish-born architect in Sherman at that time, was probably responsible. Most of the homes of the Birge Children and other nearby houses are known to have been designed by Tulloch. The Capt. Birge House is the oldest and largest house in its neighborhood, and is one of only eight or nine similarly styled houses surviving in Sherman. The neighborhood is one of older homes, and at the time of the house's construction was near the western city limits.

To the rear (north) of the Birge House is a Colonial Revival house moved to its site in 1917 by Fred Birge, a son of the captain. Immediately to the east is a 1918 brick bungalow built by another son, George J. Birge, while one house further east on the same block is the 1898 home of a daughter. On the south side of Birge Street are two very large houses built by sons Willard and Nathaniel in 1910. The Capt. Birge House was the first and most dominant structure in one of the most prestigious of the Silk Stocking residential areas of the city, an area which today remains one of the most beautiful and desirable in Sherman.

Capt. Birge died on November 17, 1902, at age 70, and his widow Virginia Frances Birge lived on in the house until her death on January 2, 1930, at age 75. Several of the captain's children lived with Virginia, including a son from Nolan Birge's first marriage, John Bradford (68 at Virginia's death), and his wife Stella Annie Eliot (66 at Virginia's death). Children from her first marriage -- Fred Johnson, Lucy Ann, and George J. -- also lived in the Birge home.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sherman City Directories, 1887-1915.

Ancestors and Descendants, Grayson County, Texas; Grayson

County Genealogical Society, Sherman, Texas, 1980.

A History of the Great Sherman Tornado, H.L. Piner, Register

Printing House, Sherman, Texas, 1896.

Sanborn Insurance Co. Map, Austin, Texas, 1908.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Grayson, Texas, United States. 1900 U.S. Census Population Schedule
   Sherman, Precinct 1, ED 88, sheet 14A, Woods Street, dwelling 272, family 279, 13-14 June 1900.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} West Hill Cemetery Burials
   Birge, Sr, Noble Allan, b 31 May 1832 South Carolina, d 17 November 1902, s/o William Simon & Rebecca King Bond Birge. Wed Sophie Bradford 31 May 1827 [sic]. 2nd Virginia Frances Jennins [sic]. .
3. ↑ Marion, Texas, United States. 1870 U.S. Census Population Schedule
   Jefferson, Ward 4, page 9B, dwelling 45, family 46, 16 September 1870.
4. ↑ Grayson, Texas, United States. 1880 U.S. Census Population Schedule
   Sherman, Ward 2, ED 3, page 21A, dwelling 206, family 251, 8 June 1880.
5. ↑ 36, head of household
6. ↑ 48, head of household
7. ↑ 68, head of household