Texana Thursday: The White House of the Gulf Coast

The Ross Sterling Mansion at Morgan’s Point near La Porte (HAR.com photo)

If you want to live in the White House, yet not leave Texas, much less run for office, you’re in luck. This month a Texas mansion modeled after the White House was put up for auction.

The house, located at 515 Baybridge in Morgan’s Point near La Porte, doesn’t have the history of the White House, but it has an interesting story of its own.

Ross Sterling, the founder of Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil), was the man who had the house built.

Alfred C. Finn, a leading architect of the time, designed and built the house, which was situated on a six-acre lot facing Galveston Bay. The east, Galveston Bay-facing side of the house resembles the South Portico of the White House.

The house is approximately 21,000 square feet with 34 rooms, including seven fireplaces, nine bedrooms and 15 bathrooms. It features a 12-inch Texas limestone façade on a deeply submerged foundation, which helped to preserve the house through the hurricanes and tropical depressions that hit the Gulf Coast.

Sterling called the house Miramar (for “sea view”). It opened in 1927, and served as a second home for Sterling, who lived in Houston as he built his fortune in the oil business.

Miramar was not the only famous house in which Sterling would live. He served as governor from 1931-33, and he lived in the Texas Governor’s Mansion during those years. He returned to Houston and resumed his business career before his death in 1949.

Sterling gave Miramar to charity in 1946. The Juvenile Optimist Club used it as a juvenile boys’ home before the house went through a succession of owners. The site has a historical marker.