Historic Hensley Gusman House

Alexander D. Hensley (1859-1947) purchased land at this site in January 1889. With his wife, Maggie (1875-1960), he asked his brother, Architect Henry Hensley, to design this house to catch breezes from any direction.   Built in 1905 by the Alamo Lumber Company, the house is a fine local example of a Victorian-Era residence, with stylistic influences of the Queen Anne Period. The house is a Greek Cross plan design featuring a distinctive octagonal floor plan, with porches providing additional spaces to complete the octagon. Because of its unusual floor plan, the house’s central living room contains eight doors but no windows; three of the doors originally opened onto the corner porches, but the addition of a bathroom in the 1930’s eliminated one of the corner porches. Prominent features include a cross-gable roof with wood shingled gable ends, and decorative wood brackets at cutaway corners above corner windows and on the porches. The original wooden porch floors were replaced with concrete in the 1930’s, but the decorative wood columns and brackets and doors remained on three of the porches.    Retail Salesman, James Robert Gusman (1862-1944), his wife Bettie Amanda Harrington (1864-1948), and their six children, Herbert, Cooper, Richard, Lula, Mamie, and Ethel, moved to Bay City from Weimar in 1911. They bought the house from the Hensley’s in 1919, and it remained in their family for generations.   Upon the death of Ethel Gusman (1908-2002), the last surviving member of the Gusman children, in 2002, the house became the property of the Matagorda County Museum. In 2003, Timothy Sloan purchased the house from the museum. During restoration work on the house in 2006-2007, cracks, which could not be repaired, were discovered in the concrete porch at the rear of the house. The decorative wood columns and decorative brackets of the original porch at the rear of the house were found under siding and the porch was restored to its original state. The building now houses Edward D. Jones Stock Broker, James Scardami, but was the former office of the Law Office of Matthew Hardy Sloan.

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