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SITE OF JACOB ROUTH MANSION

Courtesy Richardson Public Library.

In 1860, nearly a decade after he had come from his native Tennessee to take possession of some property a few miles north of the site of the then-future town of Richardson, prominent early settler Jacob Routh started to build a 12-room, two-story house, or mansion as some called it, on the south side of Spring Creek, near the boundary line between Collin and Dallas counties. Because of the Civil War, the house was not finished until 1871, after which time it not only housed the Routh family but also served as a stagecoach station until the coming of the Houston & Texas Central railroad, which laid tracks across Routh's property in 1872 or 1873. The house was remodeled in 1907.

After Routh died in 1879 and was buried in a nearby family cemetery, his widow continued to live in the house, with unmarried daughters Rose and Clara, who were only toddlers when their father died, until her own death in 1916. Afterward, Rose and Clara contiued to occupy the mansion. Rose, the older of the two, died in 1954. After Clara passed away in 1962, the house lay abandoned and vacant until late September 1965, when Jacob Routh's mansion burned to the ground, leaving only two brick chimneys and the foundation standing. Investigators concluded that vandals, who'd been trashing the interior of the house in recent years, had started the fire that consumed the century-old structure. After the remains of the house were cleared, and the land sold to Hunt Properties, the site stood vacant for the remainder of the twentieth century. In 2000, the nine-story-tall Tower 2600, at 2600 N. Central Expressway was built on the site.