The first building on SFA’s campus was the house that would become the first President’s home. The R. A. Hall homestead, one of the original tracts purchased for the campus, included a nice frame house, shown right. Mr. and Mrs. R. A. Hall were the grandparents of former State Senator and SFA Regent Roy Blake.

When President Alton Birdwell and his wife first moved to Nacogdoches in 1922, they lived off campus. When Birdwell immediately asked the State Regents if the house could be remodeled to serve as his home, they authorized him “to proceed with the remodeling of the frame house.” The Governor, however, vetoed the appropriation. When the construction of the Austin Building ran into trouble, the state authorities reapproved the plan to proceed with the remodelling of the Hall homestead; they needed the president on the new campus to oversee its construction.

The specifications included the removal of the double-decked porches and the dormer windows from the roof. The new front entrance was a federal-style doorway flanked by columns; a Palladian sytle decorative window replaced the upstairs door to the porch. A new and more modern configuration of windows–three windows both upstairs and down–replaced the original groupings of two. To complete the new window treatment, nine lights over a single pane below gave the house a lighter, lattace look. The design called for the side porch to the east to be transformed into a small screened porch which was later enclosed to make a small morning room. The one story section across the back of the house remained; the kitchen part of this extension was updated.

President Birdwell called SFA’s first presidential home “indifferent but comfortable.” The Boyntons did some remodeling on the house during their tenure. They added the carport and replaced the old one car garage with new upstairs appartment. In 1956, the university moved the Hall-Birdwell-Boynton house south of the nearby home demonstration house. The Boynton’s new carport, however, was added to the colonial structure which replaced the original house. The Hall-Birdwell-Boynton House, SFA’s first building and president’s original home, is now a bed and breakfast inn on Shawnee Street in south Nacogdoches.

The President's home from 1923 to 1957

The move to replace the old remodeled farmhouse

The idea of a new house for the first family had surfaced early in the 1930s, but the realization of this dream would take two decades. The Depression made any talk of this move impossible at first. By August of 1937, however, President Alton Birdwell did place the request in the college’s Ten Year Plan which he gave to the State Board of Regents. Birdwell’s request read as follows:

The present home of the President of the College is an old remodeled house. Comparatively little money was spent upon it and the state has spent no money to furnish the house. I think an electric stove is the only furnishing that has been put into the home at state expense. I and my family have been very happy in it and we are comparatively comfortable. It is also probable that a new home would be occupied for a very short time by the present President of the College, but it would be a fine improvement to build one in keeping with other facilities of the College and one that would be attractive both on the outside and on the inside. I am including it in the ten year plan and would like to try to secure sufficient money to do this from the next Legislature. It should not cost less than $15,000.00.

The outbreak of war negated Birdwell's plan. When the Boyntons came in 1942, Mrs. Juanita Boynton had rather definite ideas for what she wanted in a replacement house, but the dreams were continually sacrificed to the war and the postwar building crisis (classrooms, housing, and library) which reached into the mid-1950s. The Board of Regents did not approve the building of a new presidential house until 1956 as announced in The Pine Log on May 26: "New Home For College President To Be Built."

The logistics called for the old house to be moved to a east of the Home Management House on Starr, and for the family to live in the garage apartment. (The garage apartment and porte-cochère, which were relatively new, were to become part of the new house.) The move did include the small sunroom porch on the east; the shrubs and the azelias were also transplanted to make way for the construction. The moving contractor from Cushing told Mrs. Boynton he could move the old house with all of its furniture in place, even the china and crystal in the cabinets. While leaving the furniture, she demurred on the breakables. By specific request, she had him leave the large trees in the front, especially the large magnolia; the old house was pulled north of the magnolia with only the sacrifice of minor saplings. Finally, after everything, the old frame house was to be reworked for student housing or home demonstration use.

The New House

The architect for the house was Shirley Simon of Lufkin/Tyler, and the contractor for the new house was Tom Hampton of Nacogdoches. The house itself was a colonial-style brick home. Its slender, two-story Roman Doric or Tuscan columns have bases and are without fluting. One of the characteristics of houses built in the 1930s through the 1950s was to omit an entrance hall. While imposing, the house is not really very large and was out-of-date as a place for receptions from the beginning. The size of SFA had changed dramatically in the 1940s and 50s; it was to change even more in the next two decades. In 1945 there were 359 students; by1950, 1706 students. By the fall of 1958, enrollment was at an all time high of 2017 students. The explosion continued under Steen; by1965, the figure jumped to 5,784; by 1970, the student population reached 9,614; in 1975, the last fall of Steen’s tenure, the total was 11,293. The President’s House, as designed to stay within the limited budget allowed by the Regents, was not even adequate to host receptions for the great increase in the size of the faculty, and it was totally impossible to host gatherings of the student body as had taken place in earlier years. The building of the new Student Center in 1964 seemed to solve the problem. Dr. and Mrs. Steen moved the annual receptions to the new Student Center as soon as it was complete; this was before the death of Mrs. Steen. Her death, however, made it more difficult to continue to host university functions at the President’s House. Virtually all of Steen’s later receptions were hosted at the University Center. Dr. and Mrs. Johnson returned to using the President’s House for limited functions in the 1970s and 80s, a practice continued by later presidents.