Ace of Clubs House

This unusual octagonal house was built in 1885 in the shape of a club from a playing card, allegedly funded by a winning poker hand. It now serves as a house museum.

The Ace of Clubs House stands at 420 Pine Street in Texarkana, a twenty-two-sided Italianate Victorian mansion built in 1885 by James Harris Draughon. Born in 1843 in Waverly, Tennessee, Draughon was a Confederate veteran who came to Texarkana when the city was founded in 1873 to work with a lumber firm. When the firm dissolved in 1875, he launched an independent dry goods and lumber business and served as one of the city's first mayors from April to July 1876. According to the legend that gives the house its name, Draughon won $10,000 in a poker game on the strength of an ace of clubs and commissioned a mansion shaped like the card that made his fortune. The floor plan features three octagonal wings — the leaves of the club — opening onto a central octagonal stair hall, with a rectangular wing forming the club's stem. A forty-six-foot cupola rises above the rotunda, which contains a marble mantel, French mirrors, and a spiral staircase. A moat encircling the residence served as an ingenious pre-air-conditioning cooling system, collecting cool air that rose through the cupola and circulated through the house.

The home passed through remarkably few hands. William Lowndes Whitaker Sr. owned it from 1887 to 1890, after which attorney Henry Moore Sr. and his wife Katherine Flemming Moore purchased the property. Their son Henry Moore Jr. and his wife Olivia Smith took over in 1920, and Olivia remained in the house until 1985 — nearly a century of Moore family occupancy. Among the artifacts preserved from the Moore era are a Steinway and Sons Model O baby grand piano from circa 1902, Lincrusta-Walton wall coverings in the dining room, and what is reportedly Texarkana's first color television, an RCA set from 1958. Upon her death, Olivia donated over five hundred pairs of designer shoes to the museum collection. The Moores donated the house to the Texarkana Museum System in 1985, and it reopened as a museum after renovation in 1987. Each room is restored to represent a different period in the home's history, spanning from 1880 to 1940. The property holds dual recognition as a National Register of Historic Places listing and a Recorded Texas Historical Landmark, with the Texas designation dating to 1964.

The house is believed to be haunted by the youngest son of the original owner, James Harris Draughon, who fell from a tree in the front yard and died from his injuries. His spirit is said to linger in the parlor and around the grounds where the accident occurred. Visitors and museum staff have reported hearing the sounds of card shuffling and the clink of poker chips emanating from empty rooms — activity attributed to the gambling spirits who, according to local lore, helped generate the fortune that built the house and never left. The apparition of James Draughon himself has been reported sitting in his favorite parlor chair, as though still presiding over the unusual mansion his lucky hand created.

The Texarkana Museums System offers special "after dark" walking tours through the Ace of Clubs House and the adjacent P.J. Ahern's Home each October, allowing visitors to experience the house in its most atmospheric conditions. The Haunted Texarkana Ghost Walk, which departs from the Lindsey Railroad Museum on Saturday nights, includes the Ace of Clubs House among the city's documented haunted locations. The house has been featured on HGTV's Christmas Castles and Bob Vila's Guide to Historic Homes, drawing attention to both its architectural uniqueness and its spectral reputation. As of December 2025, the house has reopened after a period of renovations for a limited engagement of tours.