Historic Ramey House in Tyler sustains fire, water damage

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - KLTV was given a look inside the historic Ramey House in Tyler after a fire on Saturday caused extensive damage to the house which is almost 120 years old.

The Ramey House, at the corner of Broadway Ave. and Houston St., is now being used by a Tyler roofing business.

“Still pretty surreal. Still don’t believe that the words out of her mouth were 605 is on fire,” said Jacob Law, co-owner of Stonewater Roofing. He said he got the call Saturday night from employees who were pulling up to the business for a personal event and saw the smoke and flames.

“We’ve got all of our staff relocated down to our other office temporarily to be able to work out of it, luckily we’re not too far down the road. We’ve come in, tried to salvage what we could,” Law said. “Priority was to get the five and a half feet of water out of the basement to make the foundation and everything was good and would remain good.”

The Ramey House was built in 1903 and was once home to Thomas Boyd Ramey, a prominent attorney and founder of the Tyler Rose Festival. The house also has been designated a Texas Historic Landmark, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a City of Tyler historic landmark.

“My understanding is that the exterior is the main concern for the historic landmark pieces of it,” he said.

Law said this is their executive office building space. The fire damage was contained to the third floor, which Law said was mostly attic space.

“So, the first floor, we’re on now, and the second floor did not take on actual fire damage. But with tens of thousands of gallons of water coming in to put out that fire, you’ll see that we’ve got a lot of water damage,” he said.

Stonewater Roofing has been in the space for about three years. Furniture wise, Law says they were only able to salvage about 20 percent of it. Law says the goal is to rebuild. They are continuing business at their other office.

Copyright 2022 KLTV. All rights reserved.