McKinney's Grand Homes

Just west of the courthouse square, the merchants, bankers, and lawyers who prospered as McKinney boomed built themselves the kind of houses meant to be admired. Locals came to call these tree-lined blocks the Silk-Stocking district — a nod to the wealth on display behind the wraparound porches and corner turrets. This walk threads past a dozen of those landmark homes, most of them built between the 1880s and the 1920s in the Queen Anne, Eastlake, and prairie styles that defined small-town Texas at its most ambitious. You'll meet the families behind the woodwork: cotton brokers and dry-goods merchants, a dentist and a livestock trader, and the parents of a baby girl named Rebekah who would grow up to be the mother of a president. Every house here is a private residence, so admire from the sidewalk, keep your voice down, and let the architecture do the talking.