The Orange fire marshal was meeting with the Orange police Monday morning to discuss three fires at vacant buildings within about 30 hours during the weekend. Two of the houses were two-stories tall and in the Old Orange Historic District.
The first was reported about 4:45 p.m. Saturday at the corner of West Cypress Avenue and Sixth Street (above). The second fire at Eighth Street and Sholars Avenue was reported about 10 p.m. Sunday. While firefighters were there, a call came that a two-story house, formerly a homeless shelter, was on fire at 1207 West Park Avenue (below) at the railroad tracks.
Rosa Thomas lives next door to the house on West Cypress. She calls her neighbor Paul a “hero,” but won’t give his last name because she says he’ll be embarrassed. Thomas was at her son’s house in Houston Saturday. When he saw the fire, Paul got her dogs out of her house and then began spraying her house with her garden hose. She said firefighters told her he helped save her house.
Thomas said the house that burned was built by her late husband’s grandfather in 1903. It has been vacant for the past few years and she has complained to the city code enforcement office. Vagrants have at times stayed in the house and people have stripped some of the fixtures out. More recently she had seen front door missing from the house. Monday morning she said she doesn’t know how the fire started but speculated it might be from a vagrant or even fireworks. She said on Friday someone was shooting fireworks so close to her house that she went outside to check.
Thomas said three families have lived in the house. In the 1970s, Cecil and June Wingate moved their large family into the house. The house, like most in the historic district, was built with pine that had been locally milled.
The house on Park Avenue had also been vacant for a couple of years after serving a few years as Serenity House to help people with drug problems. Before that it had been The House of Refuge, a homeless shelter. Sally Burman arrived at the scene and told KOGT her group, The Southeast Texas Dream Center, was in negotiations to buy the former homeless shelter and reopen it.
The house was designed and built by local architect Thomas Howell as his family home. The Orange County Appraisal District reports the house was built in 1920. Howell designed and built several of the prominent houses in the Old Orange Historic District. In addition, he was the architect for the Gothic style First United Methodist Church in The District. The church’s website says Howell began designing the church building in 1919 and it started being used in 1921. In addition, Howell served as board president for Orange Independent School District in the 1930s. A concrete block in front of the house had a metal loop to allow a rider to tie a horse. People in Orange into the 1930s often kept horses and would ride them in the morning for recreation.
Howell’s daughter, Thomasine Howell Carter, who died in 2002 at the age of 94, once said her father designed and built the mansard-style roof on the upstairs to expand the house. The expansion was made after a relative died. The widow and her young son moved into the house to live with the Howells.
The house at Eighth and Sholars Avenue was a small out-building behind a larger wood-frame house that is vacant.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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