If Walls Could Talk: Tales of Innovation and Renovation from the Cavitt House

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By Rachel Knight

Built in the late 1870s, the Cavitt House is one of the oldest structures in Bryan College Station, according to Randy Haynes, senior city planner for the City of Bryan.

“The house was a style called Italianate,” Haynes says. “It was built at about the same time as Texas A&M [opened]. It’s one of the few buildings in Brazos County that is as old as the institution of A&M. There’s probably no building at A&M as old as this.” William R. Cavitt married Mary Mitchell, a niece of Colonel Harvey Mitchell, commonly called the “Father of Brazos County.” Together, they had six children, two of which were twins. W.R. Cavitt built the two-story house with exposed brick, gingerbread trim, and three-inch-thick wood floors on a plot of land as old as the City of Bryan. The land’s records date back to when the county courthouse was in Boonville. According to Haynes, W.R. Cavitt owned all the land between his house and Villa Maria Road. The neighborhood surrounding the Cavitt House became known as Jackass Prairie because many of the homeowners were doctors and lawyers, Haynes says.

The exterior walls of the Cavitt House are three layers of brick thick. If they could talk, each brick would have a story of its own about the fascinating people who have passed through the 140-year-old home.

W.R. Cavitt’s influence on the community includes roles in the development of Bryan and Texas A&M University. He was a lawyer; county attorney; rancher; oil leaser; director at Texas A&M, which is the equivalent of a regent today; an early investor in the City National Bank; and a true character. His family came to the Brazos Valley in 1836, the same year the Alamo fell, according to Haynes. “Cavitt was born up in Wheelock,” he says. “They were a fairly prominent family. They had some means. They owned some enslaved people.”

W.R. Cavitt’s interaction and play with slaves as a child likely played an influential role in a civil rights lawsuit that took place in Bryan long before civil rights suits were common, explains Haynes. Born enslaved to the Cavitts in Wheelock, Perry Cavitt likely played with W.R. Cavitt when they were children. As a young man, while delivering melons in a horse-drawn wagon in Bryan, Perry and his friends stopped in front of the house of a white Bryan homeowner who started lipping and shooting at them, Haynes explains. The African American men fled leaving their horses and wagon behind, and returned armed with a gun. The homeowner started shooting again, but this time Perry shot back and hit the man. The man died from his wound five days later. Surprisingly given the period in history when this took place, Perry was able to stand trial without being lynched; however, at his trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Perry hired an African American lawyer named Johnson, who argued Perry was not tried by a jury of his peers. “It went to the appellate court, and his argument did not prevail, but they commuted Cavitt’s sentence from death to life in prison,” Haynes says. “So, they sent him to Huntsville in the middle of the 1870s. Then in about 1905 or 1906, there was a new governor in Texas (who W.R. Cavitt apparently had some pull with) that commuted Perry Cavitt’s sentence, or pardoned him. He left Huntsville, came to Bryan, and immediately went to W.R. Cavitt’s house.”

Though W.R. Cavitt cared enough about Perry to save him from life in prison, it is unclear whether or not W.R. Cavitt was a Ku Klux Klan member. In a newspaper article Haynes read from 1913, W.R. Cavitt says he is not part of the Klan. After the last of the Cavitt children died and the house was sold, a trunk of robes was found in the Cavitt House attic with names of prominent community members sewn into them. One of the robes bears the name, “W.R. Cavitt.” This particular Klan robe can be seen at the Cushing Library at Texas A&M today.

Without W. R. Cavitt, there would likely not be a Cushing Library, much less Texas A&M. To save money, the Texas government tried to close Texas A&M and give its funding to The University of Texas three times before World War I, Haynes explains. “Cavitt was one of the men that persuaded Sullivan Ross, after he left the governorship, to come and be the president of A&M,” Haynes says. A letter on governor stationery from Sul Ross to W.R. Cavitt says, “I’ve decided to accept the presidency of Texas A&M.” Once he was in Bryan College Station, Ross was credited with saving the university and likely dined at the Cavitt House.

In the 1920s, the Cavitts decided to modernize the home’s appearance. They added stucco to the exterior walls, took down much of the gingerbread trim, and tried to make the home appear more neoclassical, according to Haynes.

Eventually, the house was sold to another influential man with ties to Texas A&M, Peter McIntyre. “If you’ve ever heard of the Superconductor Super Collider ... he was the guy in charge of it,” says Haynes.

Paul and Dorothy Van Riper bought the property from the McIntyres and lived there from the 1980s to the early 2000s. They fixed structural problems, replaced electrical wiring, got new heating and cooling systems, and restored the home to the style in which the Cavitts had renovated it in the 1920s.

The Van Ripers have fascinating backgrounds of their own. “If nobody else but Paul Van Riper lived there, it would still be a pretty cool place,” Haynes says. Paul was a political science professor at Texas A&M, and Dorothy was a groundbreaking English teacher and literature professor. President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush dined at the Cavitt House twice with the Van Ripers.

Paul Van Riper was the man in charge of renting French railroads from the French in World War II. “He was in charge of this Paris train station that all the railroads came into,” Haynes explains. “For every train where we sent guns or bombs or whatever out to people, we had to pay the French people. If we were going to be in some office or palace for something, we paid rent. He was the guy who kept track of all that. … He literally dealt with Charles de Gaulle.”

The Cavitt House is now owned by Leo Gonzalez. He fell in love with the home as a child riding his bike to the mansion and peeking inside.

Like the Van Ripers, Gonzalez purchased the home when it was in need of repair. The front left corner of the house had started to crumble. Gonzalez worked with a mason to fix the problem, although they ran into some issues at first.

The mason told Gonzalez to get some bricks so he could fix the corner. Gonzalez purchased a load of modern bricks from Lowe’s only to find they were too small. “There’s no way we can use these to fix this,” Gonzalez explains. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Luckily, Dr. Van Riper had brought bricks from Ursuline Convent (which was built with bricks similar to those used in the Cavitt House) to the Cavitt property when the convent was torn down. The bricks were still sitting on the Cavitt property when the corner crumbled. The convent bricks were the perfect size, and the brick mason was able to repair the corner, according to Gonzalez.

While Gonzalez and the brick mason were working on the corner of the Cavitt House, Haynes paid them a visit. “Randy [gave] me the most beautiful watercolor painting of the house,” he says. Haynes had recovered the painting from the Cavitt House attic and said he would eventually give it to the home’s new owner.

The Gonzalez family lived in the Cavitt House for two years. They only moved back to their previous residence, an eight-bedroom, seven-bathroom house, because it had not sold. For now, the Cavitt house is rented by a family that fills the home with six kids, two of whom are twins just like the Cavitts.

The Cavitt House has served as a home to many. Renovations since the Cavitts lived there have restored the home rather than modernize it. The importance of the Cavitt House to the Brazos Valley lies in the history that has passed through it.

“This is one of those things that make the community extremely different,” Haynes says. “Never mind the fact that this is, if not the oldest, one of the oldest in town. … It’s not only significant because of its age, structure type, and style, but a combination of all those things. It is really, really important. It’s what makes Bryan, Bryan.”

A House of Characters, Collectors, and Influential People There are too many stories and artifacts from the Cavitt House to count, much less retell in a few short pages. Haynes and Gonzalez generously share some of their favorite stories and facts with INSITE below. More information about the Cavitts and the Cavitt House can be found at the Carnegie History Center in Downtown Bryan and at Cushing Library at Texas A&M.

  • Unique items found on the Cavitt property include a tombstone that was stolen by Texas A&M fraternity boys (and eventually returned), a 36 caliber Civil War era Remington revolver, and a diary listing all the boys from Texas A&M who gave one of the Cavitt daughters a ride in their car.
  • One of the Cavitt sisters owned two pet bears. One is buried in the backyard. The other was sold to a man in Dallas. When the second bear was in the freight office in Downtown Bryan, it got out of its crate around midnight. Miss Cavitt had to go to the train station in her nightgown to lead the bear back into its crate.
  • Fred Cavitt, W.R. Cavitt’s youngest son, was a photographer. Thanks to his work, we have pictures of historical landmarks like the Cavitt House. There is a darkroom for developing film in the Cavitt House attic.
  • During the time the Cavitt family lived in the house, they had one of only two tennis courts in town. The local newspaper would post tournament dates, standings, and locations of matches. The Cavitt tennis court is long gone, but the Gonzalez’ built a sand volleyball court in the backyard.
  • Before roads existed in Bryan, the city had a master plan of where roads would go. However, many residents didn’t realize the roads would cut through their property because the original landowners had died before roads were built. One instance included Haswell street, which cut through the Cavitt property and blocked the way for Miss Cavitt to get to the tennis courts. There was a big land dispute up to and including the moment when Miss Cavitt pulled a gun on a worker, telling them to, “Get the hell off of my land.” The road was eventually put in despite Miss Cavitt’s threat.
  • The Cavitts built an elaborate garden in their backyard for garden parties resplendent with rugs, stone arches, and an assortment of ornamental plants.
  • Four streets in Bryan are named after the Cavitt family: Cavitt Avenue, Twin Boulevard, Esther Street, and Ethel Street.
  • The only death by cannon fire in Bryan was witnessed by Charlie Jenkins, a guest at the Cavitt House. A few blocks from the house, two cannons were brought to Bryan from Texas A&M to celebrate the election of Grover Cleveland. The celebration was cut short when a man loading the cannon blew off his arm.
  • The Cavitt house was in the family almost exactly 100 years. When the last two Cavitt sisters died, the property was subdivided into three parts, the lot the Cavitt House sits on, a lot that is now home to a Victorian home moved here in 1984, and the land that is now Heritage Park.
  • Five families have owned the Cavitt House. Three of the owners have been lawyers. The other two were professors with doctorate degrees.

Editor's Note: Earlier versions of this article contained a misspelling of Paul and Dorothy Van Riper's name. Insite regrets the error.