The Edison Museum allows guests to examine the inventions of Thomas Edison through interactive exhibits that utilize over sixty different historic objects and artifacts, including Edison's own creations and other materials from the era when he lived. The museum's building, the former Gulf States Utilities Travis Street Power Substation, came on line in 1929 and supplied power to multiple different places during the Great Depression, such as streetlights, cotton gins, refineries, and irrigation systems.The collection of artifacts that would make up the exhibits of the Edison Museum were accumulated by W. Donham Crawford, the former Chief Executive Officer for Gulf State Utilities and President of the Edison Electric Institute in New York City. Crawford was an avid collector of Thomas Edison artifacts. Following his death of Lou Gehrig's Disease in 1984, Crawford's surviving wife, Colene, donated his collection to The Edison Museum.The Edison Museum is one of many in a concentration of museums located in the downtown area of Beaumont, Texas. The surrounding museums range in a variety of topics and include The Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the Beaumont Children's Museum, and the Fire Museum of Texas.

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The Edison Museum of Beaumont, Texas is a science and history museum dedicated to depicting the life and inventions of famed American inventor, Thomas Alva Edison. Located on what is now known as Edison Plaza, the building that houses the museum was formerly the Gulf States Utilities Travis Street Power Substation. The museum features interactive exhibits about the innovations of Edison. Additionally, many of Edison's inventions are kept in the museum, such as the phonograph, incandescent light bulb, and selected early motion pictures created by Edison.

The Edison Museum

This tour starts in the Oaks Historic District and includes several historic homes including the McFaddin-Ward House Museum before making its way east to the downtown area. Highlights of the tour include the Woman's Club of Beaumont, several museums, Jefferson Theatre, the Tyrell Historical Library, Jefferson County Courthouse, and the Temple to the Brave.

Built in 1906 by a local lumberman to reflect both Beaux-Arts Colonial and Southern Greek Revival styles of architecture, this house on Calder Avenue in Beaumont, Texas, was sold to the Chambers family in 1914. C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers moved into the home with their two young daughters, Edith and Ruth. The family cherished the home for the rest of their lives. While the Chambers daughters did go off to college, a fairly unusual occurrence in those days, both returned home after graduation with teaching degrees, never married, and stayed in the house until their deaths. By chance and by choice, few changes occurred to the house or its furnishings in nearly ninety years of Chambers family occupancy.The collection inside contains nearly all of the original family furniture and artifacts, most dating to a 1924 remodel. Very little was ever thrown away and the family rarely purchased anything new. The present house tour, therefore, was fairly easily designed by the Beaumont Heritage Society as a time-capsule experience, illustrating life for one Beaumont family from 1920 through the end of World War II. Tours of the house emphasize its architecture but also highlight the vast collection of artifacts it contains: Florence's paintings, Edith's and Ruth's needlepoint samplers, lace and linen textiles from the family's sideboards are just three of the temporary (rotating) exhibits created by the society in the last year.Most historic house museums reflect the life-styles of upper-class families. The Chambers House is unique in its reflection of the lives of an upper-middle-class family. Edith and Ruth Chambers did receive a small inheritance upon their father's death in the 1950s, but they managed to grow that money into a sizable fortune by wisely investing in the stock market. Although neither sister ever worked outside the home, both were well versed in business tactics (through self-education and college experiences) and were able to make savvy stock selections. Making it their mission to leave their dividends (and their family home) as a legacy for all to enjoy and as a local history teaching tool, the sisters lived well below their means and established the C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Foundation to maintain the home and preserve it as a museum after their deaths (Ruth in 1989 and Edith in 2004). The Beaumont Heritage Society was left in charge of conserving the house and its artifacts.

Constructed in 1906, this historic home is open for public tours which include exhibits about Beaumont's history original furnishings, and decorative items. The home and museum is operated by the Beaumont Heritage Society. To highlight the uniqueness of a middle-class historic house time-capsule experience, the organization encourages visitors to contrast their visit to the Chambers house with a visit to the McFaddin-Ward house on the same street. That lavish home, also curated by the Beaumont Heritage Society as a time-capsule display, details the lifestyles of an upper-class Beaumont family whose fortune was made through agriculture and oil discovery.

Chambers House Museum

The McFaddin-Ward House is known not only for its history, but also for its architecture. The house was designed in the Beaux-Arts Colonial style. It&nbsp;was built in 1905-1906 for W.P.H. and Ida Caldwell McFaddin, as well their children. The McFadden's were wealthy before moving to&nbsp;Beaumont.&nbsp;However, they became even&nbsp;more so because&nbsp;the area was doing well economically. In 1901, oil was discovered in a nearby region; therefor, the land that the McFaddin's owned increased in value. The house&nbsp;stayed&nbsp;in the&nbsp;McFaddin&nbsp;family&nbsp;all through the twentieth century.&nbsp;Furthermore, the family rarely made renovations or changes to the décor of the home,&nbsp;especially after 1950. Mamie McFaddin, the daughter of W.P.H. and Ida McFaddin,&nbsp;and her husband Carroll Ward, were the last of the McFaddin family to love in the house. The two were also how the museum got its name.&nbsp;Mamie kept a detailed diary of her time there, which now serves as an artifact in the Mcfaddin-Ward Museum.&nbsp;Today, the home has not been updated in order to preserve the history that resides inside. Tours are offered for visitors to the museum. It serves as an example of the region's local history during the early twentieth century.&nbsp;

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the McFaddin-Ward House Museum strives to showcase the history of the house for the public. This museum is a part of the surrounding community, and those who run it devote their time to preserving the history of the house and showcasing it for the public education and enrichment. The McFaddin-Ward House is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. 

McFaddin-Ward House Museum 

Miles Frank Yount was born in Arkansas. The exact date is not readily available but he was the first child of his parents, Joseph and Nathaniel. When he was nine, Joseph died, forcing Yount to quit school and work on the family farm. As a young man, he found a job working on rice farm near Beaumont in 1897. In the early 1900s he became interested in oil drilling and started his own drilling business in the South Lake Oil Field in 1909.Around the early 1920s he founded the Yount-Lee Oil Co. with financial backing from a Houston financier named T.P. Lee. They were convinced that more oil was located in the Spindletop Oil Field and were proven correct as the first well produced 4,500 barrels of oil by 1925. Eventually, the wells produced millions of barrels of oil from deep into the sandy areas of the field. Yount also built a large storage tank, oil terminals, and dock facilities to process the oil and get it to market.His success made him very wealthy, which allowed him to pursue other interests including raising horses and purebred cattle (he built the Spindletop Stables for his horses and the Yount Jersey Farm for the cattle). He also collected a variety of items such as books, violins, rugs and tapestries, and built a summer home in Manitou, Colorado. The Austin Co. of Texas, which was based in Dallas, built the Mildred Buildings at a cost of $700,000. Why he decided to invest in these properties in unclear. When Yount died, his interests were worth around $46 million dollars. The Mildred Buildings were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and were designated as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1999.

Constructed in 1930, the Mildred Buildings are striking examples of Mediterranean Revival architecture. The complex consists of the three-story apartment building, a one-story commercial structure, and a large garage that is attached to the commercial building. They were built by wealthy oilman Miles Frank Yount, who named them after his daughter Mildred. The apartments and commercial buildings feature exterior walls covered in terra cotta, brick, and decorative concrete elements, and bronze and wood decorative screens and balustrades. Interesting features of the apartment building include stained and leaded-glass windows, and an arcade above the main entrance with spindled columns and red tile roof. The commercial building features an arched arcade, a terra cotta parapet with finials, and three towers.

Mildred Buildings

The Woman's Club of Beaumont was established by a group of women on January 18, 1895 when they met in the home of Mrs. Hal W. Greer. The club was one of many that were created around the country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its initial purpose was to promote education, literacy, and the establishment of libraries in the area. Four years later, it changed its name to the Women's Reading Club and joined the Texas Federation of Woman's Clubs, which was founded in 1897. In 1905, the club was chartered by the State of Texas.It took until 1909 for the club to raise enough funds to erect the clubhouse. In 1927, the club changed its name back to the Woman's Club of Beaumont. The building was used by the Red Cross and the Office of Civil Defense during World Wars I and II. Club members participated in a number of activities for the wars including bandage rolling, making flags and surgical dressings, and packing and shipping Christmas packages to troops overseas. For many years, the clubhouse was the only building in town that had an auditorium. As a result, it was used for theater productions, musical performances, and other events.

The Woman's Club of Beaumont has served as an integral part of the community since it was founded in 1895 and operates from a headquarters that is located in this historic building designed in the Classical Revival style in 1909. Over the years, this building has not only has housed the activities of the club but has also hosted numerous social, artistic, and cultural events for the community. Over the years, this building has been the location of banquets, dances, plays, musical performances, and art exhibits, and the building is available to rent for these types of events today. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. 

Woman's Club of Beaumont (1909)

The Fire Museum of Texas&nbsp;houses one of the most comprehensive collections of fire-service apparatus and artifacts in the United States. Permanent exhibits trace the history and evolution of the fire apparatus&nbsp;from bucket brigades to nineteenth-century hand pumpers&nbsp;and&nbsp;steam&nbsp;fire engines to motorized apparatus of the twentieth century. The world's largest working fire hydrant (dalmatian-spotted, at twenty-four feet tall and over 4,500 pounds) is also permanently on display.&nbsp; Temporary exhibits installed during the year offer differing&nbsp;perspectives and insight into fire service history, interpreting aspects of&nbsp;significant historic events, or revealing more about how specific firefighting equipment or tactics have evolved over time.&nbsp;Docents explain how disasters such as the 1937 New London school explosion and the 1947 Texas City disaster changed the way local fire services handled emergency calls and fought fires. Visitors can also place the Beaumont and Texas&nbsp;fire services in global perspective via the Fire Departments of the World exhibit. Children can also learn fires safety measures via the interactive displays and the "Learn to to Burn" curriculum around which the Children's Fire Activity Center is&nbsp;organized. The State of Texas Firefighter Memorial is housed at the fire museum. Designed and sculpted in bronze by Ron Petit, the four-hundred-pound&nbsp;life-sized statue honors&nbsp;the selfless service of all Texas firefighters and is dedicated to all career, volunteer, and industrial firefighters who have served the state.&nbsp;Visitors with connections to firefighters in Texas may purchase commemorative bricks in honor or memory of a firefighter. Those bricks are continually being&nbsp;installed in a walkway surrounding the museum plaza. In this way the Fire Museum of Texas serves as an educational resource and as&nbsp;a permanent memorial to those who are and have been part of the fire service of Texas. Near the Texas memorial is a small commemoration of the sacrifices made by fire fighters on September 11, 2001, during the World Trade Center attacks. A small piece of I-beam from one of the towers and other&nbsp;debris and ash serve as stark reminders of the events of the day&nbsp;&nbsp; The history of the fire service in Beaumont dates to September 1881 when a large fire at a local lumber yard helped the citizens of the area recognize the need for fire protection.The rapid expansion of the regional population, resulting from the burgeoning oil industry in the area, also made&nbsp;city officials became apprehensive about threats from devastating fires in the oil fields.&nbsp;What had once been a&nbsp;sleepy little lumber camp was now&nbsp;home to processing plants, storage facilities, and shipping points for the oil industry, and residents recognized the inherent dangers.&nbsp;In October of 1881, residents held a Grand Fireman's Ball to collect money to purchase a rotary pump. Firefighters were not paid, and, indeed, had to pay 75 cents every three months for the "privilege" of being a Beaumont fire fighter. Over the years, as the city grew, it purchased more fire equipment and&nbsp;established more and more fire stations so that, as of today, there are&nbsp;twelve stations serving Beaumont. The historic Central Station, the original city fire station, houses the Fire Museum of Texas, which opened in 1984.&nbsp;

The Fire Museum of Texas is dedicated to preserving regional fire service history, educating people about fire safety, and commemorating the contributions of the fire service. The museum is housed in the Beaumont Fire Department’s Central Fire Station, a two-story, seven-bay station built in 1927. Opened originally as the Beaumont Fire Department Historical Museum in 1984, the Fire Museum of Texas has been endorsed by the State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association as the official fire museum of Texas since 1986.

Fire Museum of Texas

The Edison Museum allows guests to examine the inventions of Thomas Edison through interactive exhibits that utilize over sixty different historic objects and artifacts, including Edison's own creations and other materials from the era when he lived. The museum's building, the former Gulf States Utilities Travis Street Power Substation, came on line in 1929 and supplied power to multiple different places during the Great Depression, such as streetlights, cotton gins, refineries, and irrigation systems. The collection of artifacts that would make up the exhibits of the Edison Museum were accumulated by W. Donham Crawford, the former Chief Executive Officer for Gulf State Utilities and President of the Edison Electric Institute in New York City. Crawford was an avid collector of Thomas Edison artifacts. Following his death of Lou Gehrig's Disease in 1984, Crawford's surviving wife, Colene, donated his collection to The Edison Museum. The Edison Museum is one of many in a concentration of museums located in the downtown area of Beaumont, Texas. The surrounding museums range in a variety of topics and include The Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the Beaumont Children's Museum, and the Fire Museum of Texas.

Jefferson Theatre was built during a time of significant prosperity for the local and regional economy after deep oil was discovered at the Spindletop Oil Field in 1925 (oil was first discovered there in 1901). The theater was one of several educational, public and cultural buildings constructed in Beaumont in the wake of the new discovery. By the time Jefferson Theatre was built, Saenger Amusements was one of the largest movie companies in the country, with theaters in a dozen states and even in Cuba and Jamaica before later expanding into Panama and Puerto Rico. The company was founded in 1911 by brothers Julian and Abraham Saenger.The Jefferson Theatre boasted state-of-the art special effects and lighting equipment and, as noted above, the Robert Morton organ, which is able to play numerous sounds using its 778 pipes and percussion instruments. Films were shown here as well as a wide variety of performances including vaudeville acts and stage productions. The theater is also notable for being where the film "It's a Wonderful Life" premiered in 1947. Actor James Stewart, who starred in the film, and the director Frank Capra, attended the event. Jefferson Amusement Company operated the theater until 1968. Other companies operated it until the 1970s. It began fall into disrepair and was closed for many years. Restoration efforts began in the early 1990s and the theater finally reopened in 2005. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Constructed in 1927 by the Jefferson Amusement Company for the motion picture company Saenger Amusements, this historic theater was designed by internationally known architect Emile Weil. Today, Jefferson Theatre is a historic entertainment venue and one of the highlights of downtown Beaumont. Weil designed a number of other Saenger theaters including ones in New Orleans, Pensacola, and Shreveport. Jefferson Theatre exhibits a blend of architectural styles with classical elements, cast relief panels, and a green Spanish tile roof. Another notable feature is the set of three double doors with a small balcony with an ornamental railing. Two doors are topped by pediments while the center is topped by a decorative cartouche. Inside, the theatre features a Spanish theme and a restored historic Robert Morton organ. 

Jefferson Theatre

The Tyrrell Historical Library was built in 1903 and was originally the First Baptist Church. By 1928, the congregation outgrew it and moved elsehwhere. Captain W. C. Tyrrell bought it that same year and donated it to the city in order for it to become a library. The city library operated  there from 1926 to 1974 when a new one was established. However, the library still housed a Texana and genealogical collection and became known as the Tyrrell Historical Library. The building underwent a restoration in 1987 and reopened in 1990, this time also housing an archival collection on Southeast Texas. 

Tyrrell Historical Library

Jefferson county was established in 1836.&nbsp;The site of the present courthouse, land that first belonged to one of the pioneer settlers of the area named Nancy Tevis,&nbsp;was first the location of a jailhouse that was built in 1838. In addition to a jail, the original building also included rooms that served as county offices and courts. However, the commissioners soon outgrew the building and were forced to hold business in their own homes until a courthouse was built on site. The courthouse was a two-story building built by John A. Beaumont in 1854. The courthouse, like the jailhouse, served multiple purposes. For example, both the Baptist and the Methodist congregations used it for their Sunday services. Also, during the Civil War, the building served as a hospital as it was rented by a Confederate surgeon named D. T. Ingleheart. &nbsp; Another courthouse, a red brick, three-story building,&nbsp;was designed by E.T. Heiner and&nbsp;built in 1893. It was used until after the oil boom in 1920s when the present fourteen-story Art Deco courthouse was built in order to support the needs of Beaumont's population growth.&nbsp; The courthouse features mostly original architecture with&nbsp;ornate carvings and a marble interior.

Designed by Fred Stone and A. Babin in the Art Deco style, the Jefferson County Courthouse was built in 1931 and its tall central tower makes it one of the tallest courthouses in the state. It is the fourth courthouse built for the county. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for of its architecture and the fact that it reflects the economic growth Beaumont experienced by the time of the building's construction. 

Jefferson County Courthouse

The Port of Beaumont was officially designated as its own political entity in 1949 but its history as a port dates back to 1837, coinciding with the founding of the city. For several decades only shallow boats could travel up the Neches River. Eventually, dredging of a canal down to 12 feet began in 1876. The founding of Port Arthur in the late 1890s prompted Beaumont to dredge its canal in 1908 to 9 feet deep. It was dredged once again to 25 feet in 1916, and then down to 30 feet in 1922. Today, the canal is 40 feet deep. In 1971, the Harbor Island Marine Terminal was built, offering storage and vessel berthing space. The canal allows ships from all over the world sail the 41 miles inland to reach Beaumont.

Port of Beaumont

The memorial is located&nbsp;in Pipkin Park and was dedicated&nbsp;on October 19, 1932.&nbsp;The Temple to the Brave was a project headed by the&nbsp;Colonel George Moffett Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, but the whole City of Beaumont helped fund the construction of the structure. Despite the woes of the Great Depression, citizens,&nbsp;businesses, and even school children helped raise funds for the&nbsp;memorial.&nbsp; Due to the wear and tear of time and Hurricane Rita, the temple had experienced extreme deterioration. So, in 2007 the DAR hosted a restoration project in order to&nbsp;amend the crumbling condition of the Temple. The Temple was rededicated on its 75th anniversary on November 11, 2007. This time it was dedicated in honor of the American military of all the country's wars.&nbsp;

Dedicated in 1932, the Colonel George Moffett Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution had this memorial built in honor of the Texas soldiers of World War I. The structure is comprised of granite from Colorado. It also features stained glass windows, one which depicts an American sailor, soldier, and airman and another that shows the nation's allies in its fight against Germany. The Temple houses a small museum and is open on most patriotic holidays.

Historical Highlights of Beaumont Texas Walking Tour

The Edison Museum

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information