About
The Hoover House was built by Richard M. Dudley, a banker and El Paso mayor, and his wife, Frances. The El Paso Herald described it as “one of the most beautiful homes in El Paso."
Dudley, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, co-authored the bill funding the construction of the new State School of Mines and Metallurgy (now UTEP) after the original campus was destroyed by fire in 1916.
In 1930, five years after Dudley’s death, Mrs. Frances Dudley sold the home to Rosario Campo de Fernandez Blanco and her husband Tomas F. Blanco, a wealthy brewer from Mexico. Nine years later, the Internal Revenue Service took possession of the home for nonpayment of taxes. Robert Thompson Hoover, a prominent local cotton merchant, purchased the home in 1944 for $14,000. His widow, Mrs. Louisiana Hoover, donated the house to the University in 1965.
At their meeting on July 17, 1965, the Board of Regents, on the recommendation of Texas Western College President Joseph Ray, designated the home “Hoover House” in honor of the Hoover family. Ray was the first University president to live in the home, residing there with his wife, Jettie H. Ray, from 1965-68. Other residents included President Joseph R. Smiley and Mary E. Smiley (1969-72), President Arleigh B. Templeton and Maxie Templeton (1972-80), President Haskell Monroe and Margaret Joann “Jo” Monroe (1980-87), and President Diana Natalicio (1988-2019). President Heather Wilson and Jay Hone moved into the Hoover House in 2019.
Highlights
Richard M. Dudley contracted with local architect Charles M. Gibson in 1916 to design the house. Construction was completed in 1917, the same year Dudley was elected to the Texas House of Representatives. | |
Hoover House was among the first houses built in what is now the attractive Kern Place neighborhood – then on the city’s outer fringes. | |
Living space in the home measures 7,063 square feet, while total square footage of the entire property is 39,902, or a little less than one acre. | |
Among the modern features of the original residence were tennis courts. A backyard swimming pool was added in 1971. The patio was expanded and renovated in 2000, with additional accessibility improvements added in 2017. | |
The grounds of the house feature gorgeous, sprawling landscaping that incorporates a variety of indigenous plants representative of the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert. | |
The garage was designed to include two horse stalls since horse-drawn carriages were a means of transportation at the time the house was built. |