One week later, Pierce sold the plantation to T. W. House, who was widely ridiculed for paying $100,000 in gold for the property during occupation by carpetbaggers.
Mayor of Houston during the War Between the States (and a famous blockade runner), his interests included several other plantations, railroad shares, hotels in Houston and Galveston, banking, utilities, cotton factoring, dry goods and cattle. House put the plantation back on the road to prosperity and was instrumental in establishing the Houston and Galveston Navigation Company to carry passengers, freight, and the U.S. mail via steamship between Houston and Galveston. This bold notion eventually became the Houston Ship Channel on Buffalo Bayou.
House, Texas, a town with its own general store and post office, was recognized for the high-quality sugar it produced. In fact, T. W. House won top honors for sugar at the 1883 Centennial Exposition in New Orleans. Prior to the installation of the post office in 1890, the area was known simply as Oyster Creek.
House's sons, T.W., Jr. and Mandell, played prominent roles in the operation of House endeavors. In addition, T.W., Jr. managed the Bank, a leading institution in Houston until after the turn of the century. Mandell became an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson.
With the failure of the House Bank in 1908, T. H. Scanlan, mayor of Houston during reconstruction, prosperous mercantile and real estate businessman, and one of the largest depositors in the House Bank, assumed ownership of the property. Upon Scanlan's death in 1906, his seven unmarried daughters inherited the substantial estate. In 1937, after a dispute with the City of Houston over the removal of a landmark oak at their Main Street residence, the two remaining sisters, Lillian and Stella, dismantled the family mansion and rebuilt it on what they named Sienna Plantation, for Siena in the Tuscany region of Italy, possibly because St. Catherine of Siena is the patron saint of single women. The name also reflects the rich alluvial soil of the area, the color of sienna.
