Built in 1902 and 1903, the French Chateauesque masterpiece is the most visible legacy of Anna and Henry Overholser. Henry began his life in 1846 on a farm near Dayton, Ohio. After graduating from business school, he at first entered the mercantile business in Indiana, then turned his sights toward the unsettled West. In the following decades he had mining interests in Colorado and made a fortune in the iron ore trade while in Asland, Wisconsin. By 1889 he was a wealthy man, divorced, with two grown children.

Although he was 43 years old, considered middle aged at the time, Overholser joined 50,000 other pioneers for the land run of April 22, 1889. Instead of riding a horse headlong into history, however, he came by railroad, armed with capital and several flat cars loaded with pre-fabricated buildings. By May 22, he was renting space in eight two-story buildings along W. Grand Avenue.

For the next decade Henry was a true town builder. He led the fight to move the territorial capital to Oklahoma City. He helped stop a run on the town’s banks in 1893. He used his capital for utilities, the first state fair, and recruiting railroads. And as the cultural leader of Oklahoma City, he built the first opera house. He became known as the “Father of Oklahoma City.”

At his side was the former Anna Ione Murphy, only 17 years old when the two married in October 1889. The daughter of an attorney later appointed the first treasurer of Oklahoma Territory, she became one of the leading socialites in the young boomtown. The “first couple” of Oklahoma City made their home in a suite at the Grand Avenue Hotel, another of Overholser’s investments in the future.

In 1902, after witnessing four years of steady economic growth, an optimistic Overholser purchased three lots in the new Classen‘s Highland Parked Addition. At the time, his $3700 plot of land was in a cornfield bounded by an alfalfa field, completely devoid of anything resembling a tree. Intent on building a mansion that would set the pace for others, Overholser hired Kansas City architect W.S. Mathews, a graduate of England’s Kensington Academy, and started construction on his dream home.

The exterior, called a “triumph of architectural grandeur and beauty” by one reporter, is an unusual combination of Victorian-era styles. There are traces of Queen Anne and Eastlake within the dominant Château. The most dramatic features are the three-story corner turret, the covered entryways, and the liberal use of cornice detail, classical columns, and stained glass.

The interior, described at the time with words such as “perfection,” “sumptuous,” and “revelation,” has ten rooms on the two main floors and two rooms and a ballroom on the third level. The Overholsers furnished the home with handmade Brussels lace curtains, Axminster and Wilton carpets, and furniture that reflects the French and Oriental influences of the day. Both inside and out, the home is a pure reflection of Edwardian taste.

Following a series of incapacitating strokes, Mr. Overholser was confined to a wheelchair after 1912. Photographs from that period show a sleeping porch over the east porch roof. Porch roof ballustrades were removed and portions of the house were painted a dark brown. Sandstone columns and capitals remained natural and were not painted until the extensive repainting of the structure in the 1970s.

Although Mrs. Overholser and her daughter, Mrs. David J Perry, maintained the first floor as original as practical, the second floor was redecorated at least three times and some rooms five times. The third floor was “written off” after the ballroom ceiling fell in 1939.

In 1972 the mansion was acquired by the Oklahoma Historical Society following a series of complicated maneuvers involving the city, the state, and two federal agencies as well as funding from HPI, neighborhood residents, and the Oklahoma Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, which assessed its members to raise the bulk of the money needed to acquire the house.

The house looks much as it did in the early 1900s, a monument to the pioneers who built Oklahoma City. Thus, from Mrs. Overholser’s dream and the generosity of her son-in-law, David J. Perry, the house is a tribute to “the spirit of the 1889ers.” Today, it is the only non-residential building in Heritage Hills open to the public as a museum.

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