An insurance man buys the building

On September 10, 1939 the Chronicle reported that “Lester A. Miller, Houston insurance man, has purchased a two-story building at Harvard and Eleventh from the Houston National Bank for about $40,000. The property fronts 200 feet on Harvard by 132 feet on Eleventh. The building on the site is the former home of the Reagan Masonic Lodge.” The paper had the stories wrong, for the temple has three over its basement, but its last sentence fixes what was sold.

The 200-foot frontage is Lots 13 through 16 of Block 199. The 1930 announcement had given the lodge’s site as 225 feet on Harvard, and the 1985 condominium declaration describes the same four lots plus the south half of Lot 17, so the half lot’s path through these years waits on the deed records. Home Life Assurance Company, of which Miller was general manager, made the building its Houston office, and by 1940 the press had a new name for the corner: the Legal Reserve Building. The second life had a proprietor.