Simon Gugenheim House

This structure was built at 1101 North Chaparral for Simon and Lila Belle (Soloman) Gugenheim. Simon Gugenheim (1861-1942) was a native Texan who came to Corpus Christi in 1882 with forty dollars in his pocket and remained to become wealthy. He and a friend formed the Gugenheim and Cohn Drygoods Co. In 1891, the year of his marriage, he acquired a great deal of property when he helped rescue the city's economy during a recession in 1896, and later was a successful investor in the petroleum industry. The Gugenheims had this house built about 1900. They moved into a modest apartment and sold their home in 1924. Among their philanthropies was a gift of four lots on South Broadway as the site for a YMCA building, where Gugenheim's portrait was hung. Their Victorian house of the early 1900s was moved to its present site during a period of city growth. The turret on this house survived all others in the domestic architecture of the city. The builder adorned the house with bay windows; a lunette in the front pediment; and gables faced with shingles; ornamenting the porches with columns, brackets, and banisters, and with cornices displaying wooden beads, spindles, lattices, and other Victorian gingerbread. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976

Simon Gugenheim House is a historical marker in Corpus Christi, Nueces County, dedicated in 1976. It is one of 105 historical markers documented in Nueces County in the Texas Historical Commission Atlas, among 147 historic sites cataloged across the county.

The site sits at 27.8066, -97.3954 near Corpus Christi. The nearest cataloged historic site is Sidbury House (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Merriman House (Merriman-Bobys House), Heritage Park, and Julius Lichtenstein House.

This record corresponds to Texas Historical Commission Atlas #5355006319. Use the map below for its exact position and turn-by-turn directions.