The History of 109 Stratford St.
Nestled in the heart of Houston’s historic Avondale East neighborhood, the John S. Stewart House has quietly watched over Stratford Street for more than a century. Built in 1910, the home was originally commissioned by Harry S. Tschopik, a New Orleans businessman. The house was designed by George H. Fruehling, a Houston-based architect who left his mark in Montrose and later, Los Angeles where he famously designed the Blair Estate.
But the Tschopiks didn’t stay long. Just a year later, the house was sold to prominent attorney John S. Stewart Sr., whose family would live at 109 Stratford for the next 33 years. Stewart’s lineage included the founder of Stewart Title Company, and the family split their time between this gracious city home and their summer house on Galveston Bay. After Stewart’s passing in 1922, his widow Anita remained in the home, raising their children and maintaining its stature through the 1940s.
By the time the Stewarts sold the home, what had started as a modest seven-room house had grown into a stately fourteen-room Neoclassical residence. Newspaper listings at the time described the expanded home as having a music room and conservatory on the first floor, six bedrooms, a glazed sleeping porch, and two full baths upstairs—a testament to the way the house had transformed alongside the family that lived in it.
In the mid-20th century, as Houston boomed and housing needs shifted, the home changed hands and purposes. It was briefly used as a rooming house before finding new life under Captain Clavy M. Matthews and his wife Jessie, antique dealers who relocated their renowned business, Caroline Antiques, into the home. Their shop became one of Texas’ premier destinations for rare finds and they played a key role in establishing the Houston Antique Show.
The Matthews lived in the house until 1993. Then, the home was reimagined once again as a bed and breakfast known as Kilworth Manor. It was later lovingly remodeled by the Alford family in the early 2000s.
Now, more than 110 years since its construction, 109 Stratford is home to The Marlene, where the past is not only preserved but shared. Today, guests walk through the same halls where generations once gathered, surrounded by stories, character, and a quiet kind of grandeur. The Marlene is ready to host a new generation of guests in the same spirit of gracious Southern hospitality that’s defined it for over a century.