John Park (inventor)

John Esten Park, (1814 - 1872), educated in chemistry and medicine, experimented with using concrete to construct buildings before the American Civil War. His work left the town of Seguin, Texas, with the largest concentration of 19th-century concrete structures in the U.S., if not the largest such concentration in the world.

John E. Park was born in 1814, in Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia, to James and Martha (Yandell) Park. About 1835, he married Rebecca Rosella Hubbard (1808-1877); they had seven children. He studied at the Louisville Medical Institute in Kentucky. His interest in concrete construction may have come from familiarity with the burgeoning Louisville cement industry, spurred by the widespread use of concrete able to harden under water for dams, locks, sewers, and other construction along the Ohio River.

Dr. Park took his family to Seguin, probably in 1846. There in Central Texas he found that the materials necessary for concrete production (gravel, sand, lime, and clay) were readily available. Gravel beds and sand bars occurred along the Guadalupe River. Lime could be made from limestone quarried nearby or from rocks washed down the river bottom. Caliche, thick sedimentary deposits of gravelly clay, lay so close to the surface that it was often dug to make a basement before being used in the concrete mix.

By early 1847, Park had constructed a one-story hotel using concrete. This time frame can be established because the famed Texas Ranger Jack Hays was married to the hotel owner's daughter, "in the south room of the concrete portion of the hotel on April 29, 1847". The hotel then served stagecoach riders for almost 30 years. The Magnolia Hotel was probably Park's first concrete building, and it certainly is the oldest still standing.

As a general contractor, Park also built the 1850 Guadalupe Male Academy (still standing) and the 1852 Female Department building (long lost). The non-reinforced concrete gravel-wall method promoted by Park was used in Seguin for 100 or more structures, including cisterns, walls, barns, etc., of which about 20 buildings remain extant. Park came to have imitators and competitors whose buildings are included in the total. The best known of the survivors is the Sebastopol House State Historic Site, built in Greek Revival style in 1854-56.

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