Charles Chabot House

427 Madison

This Victorian-style house uses a decorative brick pattern in the lintels and belt course banding. Beautiful details include the multiple entrances, arched transom window, spindle porch balusters, and the diamond and dart pattern on the gable front.

Charles J. Chabot bought part of this property from Thomas J. Devine and part from his parents, George S. and Mary Chabot (403 Madison) in 1889 shortly before he married his first wife, Pauline Waelden. She died after their only child, Frederick C. Chabot (429 Madison), was born in 1891. The house was probably built about 1894 when Mr. Chabot married Lillian B. Hugo. The 1901 city directory shows him here and lists his business “(Wagner & Chabot), typewriters, bicycles, 309 Navarro.” A. H. Halff rented here between 1903 and 1910 while the Chabots were living in Dallas. Mr. Chabot was tragically widowed in 1907, and, before he moved back to this house in 1912, he married his third wife, Olive Anderson Johnston. After she was widowed, Mrs. Chabot and the Chabot’s daughter, Mary, sold the property, which was a duplex at the time, to Ruperto B. and Guadalupe L. Sanchez in 1959. The Sanchez family, including daughters Luisa and Diana (see 332 King William) moved in and soon reconverted the house to a single family residence.

Mr. Sanchez was a businessman and one of his many businesses, ‘The Sanchez Ice House’, continues to operate today. Mrs. Sanchez believed in physical fitness before it was a fad. She spent many years physically maintaining her garden and in her later years would bicycle or walk between 6 and 7 pm each evening before returning home to watch the novelas. This house remained the center of their family, and at one time four generations lived in the neighborhood, until Mrs. Sanchez died in 2001. The house now belongs to her daughter, Luisa Maria, and her husband, Milton Naumann.

The King William Area, A History and Guide to the Houses, Mary V. Burkholder and Jessie N.M. Simpson; published by the King William Association, 2017