Texas Company Building
building in Houston, Harris County, Texas
The Star Houston apartments, formerly the Texas Company Building, located at 1111 Rusk Street and 720 Jacinto Street in Houston, Texas, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 2, 2003.
History
The original thirteen story, three-bay building opened in 1915 on the corner of Rusk and San Jacinto Street, as headquarters of the Texas Company. The New York firm of Warren and Wetmore designed the building in the Renaissance Revival style with Beaux-Arts accents. The exterior is faced with brick, terra cotta and Bedford limestone and features vaulted arcades supported by Tuscan columns along its Rusk and San Jacinto Street façades. A distinguishing feature of the building is its vaulted arcade with a balcony. The arcade was designed by the Guastavino tile Company.
Expansion
To accommodate growth, the company expanded the structure three times between 1936 and 1975.
In 1936, Warren and Wetmore designed a three bay addition to the east (San Jacinto Street) façade, designed in a slightly less elaborate style.
In 1959 an additional a ten-by-eight bay, sixteen story addition designed by Kenneth Franzheim was added to the west elevation of the original building. This extends along Rusk Street to the other side of the block at Fannin Street.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Texas Company Building” as building in Houston, Harris County, Texas. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as building in Houston, Harris County, Texas. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21016249. Authority coordinates are 29.761, -95.362. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1111, 2003, 1915 and 1936.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Texas Company Building”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Texas Company Building primary sources, Texas Company Building archive and Texas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Texas Company Building”?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Texas Company Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.