One of the most marvelous nineteenth-century houses in Texas, this residence is not the sort of extravagance expected outside of Galveston. The three-story masonry house has a full basement and is entirely wrapped by two-level galleries supported by a small forest of double and triple colonnettes. The animated roofscape of compound chimneys, dormers, balconies, and an onion dome makes the galleries seem almost orderly. The first-story porch columns are concrete and painted white to contrast with the horizontal dark and light colored bands of local sandstone of the house’s walls, which are its most restrained feature.
Methodist minister Thomas Broad built a two-story stone house here around 1887, which was purchased in 1891 by Edward M. Reynolds of New York, a shareholder in the new Citizens National Bank. He hired local architect-builder Grosse to enlarge the house, demolishing much of Broad’s structure and reusing the cut stone. The interior is richly finished in woodwork, brass hardware, and walnut windows and doors.
German-born Richard E. Grosse (1860–1944) studied architecture in Dresden before immigrating to Texas in 1882. He settled in the German Hill Country where he opened a lumberyard, moving the business (still in family ownership) to 118 S. Live Oak Street in Mason in 1895. Grosse’s education in Germany would have been dominated by the theory and work of Gottfried Semper, which is apparent in the exuberant materiality of the house.
Norwegian-born bootmaker Oscar E. Seaquist, who owned two buildings on the courthouse square, purchased the house in 1919. Seaquist engaged Grosse to complete some interior spaces of the house, notably the third floor ballroom.