The Great Jones Building is a building in Downtown Houston at the intersection of Capitol Street and Main Street.
Downtown is the largest business district in Houston, Texas, located near the geographic center of the metropolitan area at the confluence of Interstate 10, Interstate 45, and Interstate 69. The 1.84-square-mile (4.8 km2) district, enclosed by the aforementioned highways, contains the original townsite of Houston at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou, a point known as Allen's Landing. Downtown has been the city's preeminent commercial district since its founding in 1836.
Houston is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and the fourth most populous city in the United States, with a census-estimated population of 2.312 million in 2017. It is the most populous city in the Southern United States and on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth most populous metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the United States and the second most populous in Texas after the Dallas-Fort Worth MSA. With a total area of 627 square miles (1,620 km2), Houston is the eighth most expansive city in the United States. It is the largest city in the United States by total area, whose government is similarly not consolidated with that of a county or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties.
The Great Jones Building opened in 1908. Originally it housed the offices of the Texas Company, which later became Texaco. Jim Parsons of the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance (GHPA) believes that Sanguinet & Staats, a Fort Worth, Texas firm, may have designed the building. In 1922, the building received an expansion. When Texaco relocated to a building on San Jacinto Street, the building became the Bankers Mortgage Building. The GHPA stated that Jesse H. Jones kept an office in what is now known as the Great Jones Building while the Gulf Building was being constructed. In the 2000s Spire Realty Group decided to preserve the structure, and in 2003 the GHPA gave Spire the "Good Brick Award." During that period the building received its current name, the "Great Jones Building." [1]
Texaco, Inc. is an American oil subsidiary of Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owns the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company until its refining operations merged into Chevron Corporation in 2001, at which time most of its station franchises were divested to the Shell Oil Company. It began as the Texas Fuel Company, founded in 1901 in Beaumont, Texas, by Joseph S. Cullinan, Thomas J. Donoghue, Walter Benona Sharp, and Arnold Schlaet upon the discovery of oil at Spindletop.
Sanguinet & Staats was an architectural firm based in Fort Worth, Texas, with as many as five branch offices in Texas. The firm specialized in steel-frame construction and built many skyscrapers in Texas. The firm also accepted commissions for residential buildings, and designed many buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Fort Worth is the 15th-largest city in the United States and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly 350 square miles (910 km2) into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker and Wise. According to the 2017 census estimates, Fort Worth's population is 874,168. The city is the second-largest in the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area, which is the 4th most populous metropolitan area in the United States.
