“I really do enjoy seeing old buildings come to life.”
The O’Sullivan family has been breathing new life into old downtown properties for the better part of three decades. It’s an occupation, a hobby, a passion.
Sure, some people think it’s crazy to try to resurrect a condemned property that’s become nothing more than a roost for pigeons. It’s easy to doubt it will ever be anything more than a mess, destined to be torn down.
That rough structure can be resurrected, though. It can turn out, John Sr. says, to be a truly beautiful property – again.
“I’ve got some pictures, you would not believe,” John Sr. said, “of what these old buildings looked like.”
He got his start alongside Rick Eltife in the early ’90s.
“Rick and I have been friends since 1959, when I moved with my parents to Tyler from New York,” John Sr. said.
“From there I went down to Randy Gilbert – he was wanting to restore the jail from 1881,” and that 1993 project at 309 E. Erwin (now on the National Historic Registry) led to another a year later: “John Sauls got me to restore 108 S. Broadway for an apartment upstairs and his antique dealership below.”
Folks noticed the progress, and “We had a lot of people say it would sure be neat to live downtown.”
John Sr. listened, and when 119 E. Erwin came up for sale in 1995 on the courthouse, he found a willing backer in longtime Tyler banker George Hall (now retired).
“He was all about getting buildings restored downtown,” John Sr. said. With a loan in-hand for the project, “We started restoring it. We determined we could get eight apartments in it and two commercial spaces. As we were restoring it, people started stopping by. By the time we finished, the whole building was leased out.”
Years later, John Sr. said, it’s been leased out at 100 percent for 99 percent of the time – and it still looks great.
“It won Best Restoration in the state with the Texas Main Street Association. That 119 went so well, George said we should do one every other year.”
The effort became a string of properties.
At 300 E. Erwin, “We converted an old warehouse into seven more loft apartments. Again, they were all leased out before we finished” in 1997. “My wife and I moved into an apartment there, and we’ve been there since.”
Next was 107 E. Erwin and more apartments completed in 1999. It also houses the East Texas Symphony Association; notably, the O’Sullivans owned Liberty Hall at one point before selling it to the City of Tyler – “It was a big undertaking,” John Jr. said. “We didn’t want it torn down the way Tyler Theater was,” John Sr. agreed.
The restoration and renovation efforts ultimately expanded into a new generation: sons John Jr. and Bryan have contributed to a myriad of projects, such as the remodel of 124 S. College, an old parking garage that’s now on the historic registry.
“My boys were recently able to buy 108 S. Broadway. John Jr. runs the apartments,” and Bryan is a licensed architect. According to John Sr., “We don’t really sell our buildings. We hold on to them, and I have the next generation taking over.
“Over the years, we’ve restored 10-11 buildings in downtown Tyler. We just continued on, and we’re continuing on. I really like being in downtown.”
The O’Sullivans’ built their office and shop at 325 E. Erwin in 2017. Importantly, John Jr. noted, the family focuses on style and materials to reflect the existing downtown aesthetic.
“It doesn’t look like a metal shop or a modern structure – we bricked it all,” John Sr. emphasized.
They’re hoping a new courthouse in downtown Tyler will also complement the existing style.
John Sr. is a fan of what he’s seen of the plans so far: “I like the design of the new courthouse. We’ve totally outgrown what we’ve got,” he said. “I don’t want to try to do patchwork on it. I think it will look better being a big green space where the present one sits, with the new courthouse on the east side of the square.
“I know it will be expensive, but it’s also going to be very long-term.”
Key to the O’Sullivan family is preserving the past of the heart of Tyler.
“All these buildings have history,” John Sr. said. “Like the old parking garage – it had valet parking and a pole the attendants would slide down, a ladder to get up to the cars.
“I’m always amazed at how pretty these buildings were built with the technology they had at the time. They didn’t have all the things we have, but they had these beautiful old buildings.”
The oldest property in the O’Sullivan stable is 101 E. Erwin. It was built in 1869 like many of the buildings along the square, constructed in the 1870s-era during the boom following the Civil War.
“That’s when a lot of the wood structures got replaced with the present brick. You can’t build an old building like these – that material is just not there anymore. We actually save a lot of the old material,” storing vintage woods and other resources in a warehouse for later use.
John Sr. has always crossed his fingers they’ll one day break through a wall in an old building and find a bag of Double Eagle gold coins waiting for them… but it hasn’t happened yet.
“We found a lot of paperwork when we restored 101 E. Erwin that belonged to the original carpetbagger who officed upstairs there after the Civil War,” he recalled. The family passed the documents on for historical preservation. Another document from the same era, signed with an X, was a complaint to the local Justice of the Peace about a crooked dice game. “We found some graffiti on the wall where people said they were ‘not guilty’ and signed their names. Above 107, we had a dentist there, and we did find a handful of old teeth between the floorboards.
“We save the little things that we find.”
“As a living I did nursing homes besides restoring these old buildings – you don’t make a lot on these old buildings until they’re paid for,” John Sr. noted. “If we had a good nursing home project, it would give me enough seed money to put down on a new building.”
He’s eager to keep contributing. He remembers both the days when downtown was the center of shopping in the city and, decades later, when it seemed to be a ghost town.
“My wife and I enjoy traveling, and we’ve gone to a lot of places where they’ve restored stuff and turned it into walking downtowns,” especially in Europe, where ‘old’ for them is the 1500s or 1600s, not the 1800s. “We just like the feel of being able to walk around and have unique, individual businesses and not big strip malls or big box stores.”
He likes the permanence of the family’s efforts, and the progress too: John Sr. is pleased to see Heart of Tyler activity, and he looks forward to what comes next – things like developments in Plaza Tower and the People’s Petroleum Building or the revitalization of the old Greyhound bus station.
“I really expect to see downtown boom,” he said. “For so long, it was just Rick’s on the Square and us doing a little bit of building every other year. Now there’s other people getting involved.
“It’s just putting a lot more energy downtown. It’s all going to come together with a nice courthouse, and before we know it we’re going to have a real vibrant downtown again. I’m really excited about different things happening.”
