Completed in 1895 for lumberman James Blake Kennard (b. June 24, 1861), this imposing Queen Anne residence at 621 Saint Louis Street is widely cited as a work of architect J. Riely Gordon. Contemporary descriptions emphasize its rich wooden fabric and showy massing suited to a prosperous late-19th-century timber dealer. A Texas Historical Commission photo record (1975) documents the property and town-lot reference, while scholarly overviews single it out as one of Gonzales’s landmark Queen Anne houses.
People and context
After the death of his first wife Mary Fore (m. 1883; d. 1888), Kennard moved to Gonzales in 1893, opened a retail lumber concern, and expanded into wholesale operations shipping through Houston and Waco. That same year he married Anna Ashby Jones, daughter of Hartwell King Jones and Mary Frances (Braches) Jones—families rooted in early-Republic civic life—linking the new house to prominent local networks.
House history and features
In early 1895 Kennard purchased several lots and commissioned J. Riely Gordon to design a monumental Queen Anne residence, completed later that year. Authoritative summaries describe a two-story house with a high-pitched hip roof, gabled ells, a corner tower, and an elaborately detailed first-floor porch with Richardsonian arches—a hallmark mix of Queen Anne and late-Victorian eclecticism. Multiple photographic and travel-documentation sources note cypress “fishtail” shingles, longleaf pine clapboard siding, and decorative glass-and-pottery-chip mosaics in the gables; interior descriptions mention French beveled glass with Tiffany-style leaded glazing in select openings.