- Location
- Woodbine Drive near Gerhardt
- Years
- 1900 - ca. 1958
- Now
- Residences
According to family lore, whenever timber magnate Henry Baars asked his wife Mary Ellison what she would like as a gift, she would respond, “Just buy me a piece of land.” Eventually the Baarses owned more than 4,000 acres northeast of the city.
Around 1900 they built a home on the east side of Bayou Texar called “The Towers,” and they planned to develop the surrounding area as a residential neighborhood called Cordova Park, targeting wealthy northerners who wanted a winter home. The Towers was expanded over the years, with fourteen rooms and three bathrooms, and it overlooked a lavish garden with multiple pergolas and four cement turrets at its corners. Henry died in 1909 and Mary Ellison in 1923, and while their specific vision of Cordova Park did not come to fruition, their children began selling lots in the Cordova Park subdivisions in 1955.
Already eyed for demolition, as it blocked Woodbine Drive from connecting to Gerhardt Drive, the Baars home was badly vandalized in 1957 and razed soon thereafter.
