Completed in 1897 for attorney and later U.S. Congressman George Farmer Burgess and his wife Marie Louise Simms Burgess, this exuberant Queen Anne residence is the best local example attributed to mail-order architect George F. Barber. Set at 803 St. Lawrence Street, the house presents an intricate roofline, decorative gables, and ornamental glazing that advertised the owner’s rising public stature at the turn of the twentieth century.
Born September 21, 1861 in Wharton County, Burgess read law, was admitted to the bar in 1882, served as city attorney in Flatonia, then moved to Gonzales County, where he was elected county attorney in 1886. He married Marie Louise Simms on December 29, 1888, and they settled here as his legal and political career accelerated. Elected to the U.S. House in 1902, Burgess served through 1915, during which time he supported federal river and harbor works and public buildings important to South and Southeast Texas. Local histories credit him with securing funds that led to construction of the 1909 Gonzales Post Office, part of a wave of early-twentieth-century federal building projects.
Architecture & notable features
The design is associated with George F. Barber’s nationally circulated pattern books: asymmetrical massing; seven or more gables; a wrap-around porch; and whimsical, high-Victorian glazing, including a “keyhole” window in the front parlor and a bull’s-eye (oculus) window above. Surviving descriptions also note several stained-glass lights and four fireplaces, aligning the house with Barber’s richly detailed Queen Anne repertoire.
Civic significance
During Burgess’s tenure in Congress, federal appropriations advanced major harbor and inland waterway improvements along the Texas coast (including Galveston and the Intracoastal Waterway system) and funded post office/public building projects in smaller county seats—context for the 1909 post office here. While the congressional record spreads these items across larger omnibus bills, local documentation has long linked the 1909 facility to Burgess’s advocacy.
Later history. George F. Burgess died December 31, 1919; Marie Louise died May 6, 1932. Both are buried in the Gonzales Masonic Cemetery. The house remains a touchstone of the town’s late-Victorian streetscape and of Barber’s national reach into small-city Texas.