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(Photograph by Gerald Moorhead ) -
(The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division) -
(The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
The Stark House was built by one of the seignorial families of late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century Orange. Miriam Lutcher Stark was one of two daughters of Henry Jacob Lutcher, a lumberman who came to Texas from Pennsylvania in 1877 and, with his partner G. Bedell Moore, revolutionized the timber industry of east Texas and southwest Louisiana by vertically integrating all aspects of the business. The Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company became, for a time, the largest producer of longleaf yellow pine in the nation. The Stark House was built on Orange's grand avenue, Green Avenue, although it faces the cross street, N. 6th. Its design is a modified version of a catalogue design by Knoxville architect George F. Barber. With its galleries, bulbous turned posts, and fanlike screening, the house is a triumphant demonstration of the Lutcher and Moore company's cypress and pine products. The charitable foundation endowed by the Starks' only son, H. J. Lutcher Stark, and his wife, Nelda, rehabilitated the house and opened it to the public in 1981.