George W. Bush Childhood Home
| George W. Bush Childhood Home | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 Barbara Bush, Laura Bush (at the desk) and George HW Bush at the dedication of the memorial on April 11, 2006 |
|||
|
|||
| location | Midland , Midland County , Texas | ||
| Coordinates | 32 ° 0 '2 " N , 102 ° 5' 24.1" W | ||
| Built | 1939 | ||
| architect | Houston Hill | ||
| NRHP number | 04000768 | ||
| The NRHP added | July 28, 2004 | ||
The George W. Bush Childhood Home is a residential home in the Texas city of Midland . The future American President George W. Bush grew up here between 1952 and 1955 .
Located in an inner-city residential area on Ohio Avenue, the home was built in 1939 by local contractor Houston Hill. The client was Mildred L. Ethridge, who ran a tobacco and newspaper kiosk in the Scharbauer Hotel in Midland. Hill designed a one-story house, which he decorated on the street front with a brick fireplace. It was erected in the traditional timber frame construction within 60 days. In June 1945 Ethridge sold the house to the Hanley couple. In January 1947, Paxton Howard and his wife purchased the property and an adjacent property to the east. They modernized the house and rebuilt it in several places. The family lived there for four years, but then moved to a larger one and left the house on Ohio Avenue to contractor Lloyd Ponder.
On November 7, 1951, George HW Bush and his wife Barbara bought the property for $ 9,000. After her daughter Robin was born, her old house on East Maple had become too small. The Bush family lived here until 1955. During this time, sons Jeb and Neil were born, and Robin died in 1953 of leukemia. Her eldest son George started school at the nearby Sam Houston Elementary School and, according to his own statement, experienced the first formative years of his childhood here.
After the Bushs moved to a larger home in Midland in the fall of 1955 and then to Houston in 1959 , the home was owned by numerous other families. In 2001 the Permian Basin Board of Realtors acquired and began to set up a memorial here. The house was restored to its condition from the mid-1950s in several construction phases and has been open to the public since autumn 2004.
As the former home of two future US presidents, a future governor and a first lady, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 28, 2004 .
