A center hall carried Queen City through its early years

William Franklin Mathews and Harriet India Sharp attended Queen City's town-lot auction after the railroad stop was founded in 1877. They lived in temporary quarters behind their lot while their house went up. It was finished in 1878, one year into the new town's life.

The one-story frame house sits between Greek Revival and Victorian design, with rooms arranged around a central hall. That hall did more than join the house together. From 1902 to 1909, while a physician lived there, it served as an emergency hospital space for the community.

Mathews became a local merchant. After two fires, he built a brick store in 1884. Merchants Ross and Gussie Powell bought the house in 1918. The Mathews-Powell House became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1973 and joined the National Register in 1977. The register file described it as an occupied private residence, not a public attraction. Queen City's early lots, its merchant years, and a small-town doctor's emergency room all pass through the history of one center hall.