THE MILTON PARKER HOME
Rebirth of a Historic Bryan Building
Story by DENISE BARBIER, Photos by RACHEL GREASER
I
n the heart of the city of Bryan is
Downtown Bryan, a vibrant place
to dine, shop, conduct business, and a
burgeoning place to live. Some of the
dwellings are new, but there are also
several existing homes with enough
charm, character, and history to entice
a person to take a leap into “vintage”
homeownership. One of these historic
homes, The Milton Parker Home on 200
South Congress in the upper west end of
Downtown Bryan, has been transformed
into a luxury bed and breakfast.
The Parker Home was built in 1885 by
Milton and Molly Parker, wealthy Brazos
River bottomland owners, as their “town”
house. Molly designed the home for their
large family of eight children and hired
German carpenters from Dallas to build
the 5,000-square foot home for $6,000.
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Each bedroom was equipped with a closet,
which was an extravagance in those days
as taxes were levied based on the number
of rooms in a home.
Two different stories cite the reasoning
they built the home by the railroad
tracks. According to one source, Molly
and her girlfriends would ride the train
from her home to and from Houston to
shop. Who else can boast of door-to-door
service to big city shopping via a large
locomotive? The other version of the story
is that Milton loved to watch his cotton
bales pass by on the railroad cars to the
Galveston market. In either case, both
stories indicate that this family was part
of the affluent Bryan movers and shakers
in the late 1800s.
The home has been designated on the
National Register of Historic Places since
1987. It is an Eastlake Victorian design
with two large parlors, a huge dining
room and five spacious bedrooms. The
home is noted for having the first indoor
bathroom in Bryan with water supplied by
a cistern in the attic. The bathroom walls
were encased in one-inch thick concrete as
it was unknown how an indoor bathroom
would affect the indoor environment.
Parker family members owned the
home from 1885 until 1992. During that
time, the home was used as a boarding
house during the Depression, as a social
club known as “The Oaks” where many a
young gent met his future wife, and finally
as a home again in the 1950s. Bob and
Kate (Parker) Bernath made some minor
changes to the interior in the late 1950s.
Upon the death of Mrs. Bernath, the home
was donated to Texas A&M University