The Great Jones Building is a building in

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

at the intersection of Capitol Street and Main Street. The Great Jones Building opened in 1908. Originally it housed the offices of the Texas Company, which later became

Texaco Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American Petroleum, oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its Gasoline, fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an Indepe ...

. Jim Parsons of the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance (GHPA) believes that

Sanguinet & Staats Sanguinet & Staats was an architectural firm based in Fort Worth, Texas, with as many as five branch offices in Texas. The firm specialized in steel-frame construction and built many skyscrapers in Texas. The firm also accepted commissions for res ...

, a

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...

firm, may have designed the building. In 1922, the building received an expansion. When Texaco relocated to a building on San Jacinto Street, the building became the Bankers Mortgage Building. The GHPA stated that

Jesse H. Jones Jesse Holman Jones (April 5, 1874June 1, 1956) was an American Democratic politician and entrepreneur from Houston, Texas. Jones managed a Tennessee tobacco factory at age fourteen, and at nineteen, he was put in charge of his uncle's lumbery ...

kept an office in what is now known as the Great Jones Building while the Gulf Building was being constructed. In the 2000s Spire Realty Group decided to preserve the structure, and in 2003 the GHPA gave Spire the "Good Brick Award." During that period the building received its current name, the "Great Jones Building."Gonzales, J.R.
The evolution of the Great Jones Building
" ''

Houston Chronicle The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. , it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. With it ...

''. December 14, 2010. Retrieved on December 16, 2010.

References

{{coord, 29.7592, -95.3635, type:landmark_region:US-TX, display=title Buildings and structures in Houston 1908 establishments in Texas Texaco Buildings and structures completed in 1908