202:) featured several Oak Forest homes in an article, and said that the proposed investment of $ 32 million and projected population of 25,000 made Oak Forest, "one of the largest privately financed, single-family home developments in United States or world history." By then, many potential customers had come to think of prefabricated, prebuilt, and planned housing developments as monotonous, and lacking individuality. Sharp adopted a marketing slogan of, "No two houses are alike." The
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253:. They, in turn agreed to use the loans to buy stock in Sharp's insurance company (National Bankers Life). About the same time, Sharpstown State Bank made unsecured loans to Sharp's son-in-law, W. D. Haden II, who was then trying to buy a controlling interest in Olympic Life Insurance Company of Fort Worth. Concerned by the number and size of the loans Sharpstown bank was making, the
152:, where he lived until he finished high school. Determined to improve his lot in life, he left home at the age of 19 and headed to Houston, where he then settled. He soon got a job as a carpenter's helper during the day, while he began attending a business college at night. These actions started him on the path to becoming a major real estate developer in southeast Texas.
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Intending to remain involved in all phases of the development, Sharp reorganized his business empire to accomplish that goal. His Frank W. Sharp
Enterprises, became an umbrella company that ran four smaller entities: (a) a firm doing concrete and street work; (b) the Douglas Fir Lumber Company, whose
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By
September 1948 rising costs for materials and overheads were cutting deeply into Sharp's profit margin. He responded by contracting out the actual construction. Sharp's organization could still offer cheaper prices for lumber and office support. In 1953, Sharp announced that he would open Peoples
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Toward the end of World War II, Sharp shrewdly guessed that
Houston would continue growing to the northwest, beyond the Garden Oaks subdivision, which architect E. L. Crain had opened in 1937. In 1946, Sharp hired the architectural firm, Wilson, Morris and Crain, and bought 113 acres (46 ha) of
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In 1961, Sharp had added
Sharpstown State Bank to his holdings, and in 1963, he bought National Bankers Life. By the early 1970s, Sharp had added banking and insurance to his empire. Wanting to assure passage of a bill that would help his banking enterprise (Sharpstown State Bank), he decided to
298:, Frank Sharp, a number of other defendants, and Sharp's corporations, including the Sharpstown State Bank and National Bankers Life Insurance Corporation, with stock fraud in a scheme hatched by Sharp himself. The suit started a run on the bank by its depositors, which was quelled by the FDIC.
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two mills in the
Northwest prevented Sharp from suffering widespread shortages of lumber; (c) the Oak Forest Corporation to handle development and merchandising; and (d) the Frank W. Sharp Construction Company to handle the building. A separate, but closely connected, company took care of the
272:. He was so highly regarded by the pope and other members of the Church hierarchy that he was honored in Rome. During the Sharpstown scandal, Sharp advised Strake Jesuit to buy shares of National Bankers Life at $ 20–26 per share. The school lost $ 6,000,000 from his advice.
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and the rise of the petroleum industry. Sharp reportedly borrowed $ 150 and began building one house at a time in subdivisions that were beginning to surround the city. Soon, he advanced to building multiple homes in subdivisions like
290:(SEC) began uncovering evidence of wrongdoing in 1971, and soon began giving information to the press. On January 18, 1971, the SEC came before the federal court in Dallas to formally charge former Democratic State Attorney General
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Oak Forest was essentially "built out" by 1955, but Frank Sharp already had a vision for an even greater development. He had already bought an expanse of land at the southwest edge of
Houston and near the northeastern limit of
309:. On March 15, 1972, after only 120 minutes of deliberation by the jury, the trial ended with a guilty verdict for each of the three. The next day, Judge J. Neil Daniel sentenced them to five years' probation.
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magazine ran a laudatory article, calling the development, "the Suburb of
Tomorrow". Sharpstown did not live up to the hype. At its peak, it had 15,000 homes on 4,000 acres (1,600 ha).
229:. Promotional literature at the time described it as "the biggest real-estate subdivision in the world: 25,000 homes, 100,000 people." Frank named it Sharpstown.
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State Bank in Oak Forest. He also planned to open a 12,000 square feet (1,100 m) shopping center on the border between Oak Park and Garden Oaks in May 1953.
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Speaker of the House
Mutscher and his close associates, Heatley and Shannon, thereafter, frequently called the "Abilene Three" by the press, were charged in an
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Sharp himself pleaded guilty to all charges. He was fined $ 5,000 and sentenced to three years' probation for violating federal banking and securities laws.
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offer unsecured bank loans to a number of key politicians. The politicians who were willingly ensnared in these dealings included then governor of Texas,
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land adjacent to Garden Oaks, where he began constructing prefabricated and preassembled homes on 4780 lots by mid-1947. He named his new subdivision
136:, and as a result he was convicted of violating federal banking and securities laws and was sentenced to three years' probation and a $ 5,000 fine.
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During the 1930s, the
Houston area was reasonably well insulated from the grim economic realities of the Great Depression by the completion of the
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article noted that, "among the first 400 homes built in Oak Forest, only two were alike in planning and only two were white in color."
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Frank W. Sharp, usually known as simply Frank Sharp, was born on March 18, 1906, on an east Texas farm the near the small town of
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The
Sharpstown State Bank closure was then the biggest bank failure in the history of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
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court with accepting a bribe from Sharp. During the trial, the district attorney revealed that Governor Smith was an
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Sharp had been invited to the Vatican, where Pope Paul VI made him a founder of the New Orleans Province of the
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and became the only Protestant to be named as a "founder" within the benefactors of the
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Smaller subcontractors could often undercut him by having lower labor costs.
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451:"The Frank Sharp Affairs: Vast Scandal Stuns Democrats in Texas"
391:"Frank W. Sharp Is Dead at 87; Financier in 70's Stock Scandal"
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Major real estate developments; major Texas financial scandal
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in the early 1970s. Sharp later was a central figure in the
105:(March 18, 1906 – April 2, 1993) was a land developer in
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In July 1948, the popular and well-respected magazine
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570:American businesspeople convicted of crimes
249:, and Texas Democratic Party chairman, Dr.
431:"Frank Sharp and the legacy of Oak Forest"
403:. April 5, 1993. Accessed August 13, 2018.
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515:Texas State Historical Association
449:Waldran, Martin (August 1, 1971).
288:Securities and Exchange Commission
120:Sharp's largest projects included
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580:People from Houston County, Texas
266:Strake Jesuit College Preparatory
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505:"Sharpstown Stock Fraud Scandal"
503:Kinch, Sam Jr. (June 15, 2010).
264:, he became a generous donor to
565:American white-collar criminals
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70:Real estate developer; banker
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128:in 1955. Sharp also created
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517:. Accessed August 22, 2018.
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276:Sharpstown bribery scandal
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429:Hall, Randall L. (2009).
307:unindicted co-conspirator
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195:Better Homes and Gardens
237:, Speaker of the House
172:Oak Forest development
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168:during World War II.
150:Houston County, Texas
485:"Texas: The Founder"
467:"Texas: The Founder"
157:Houston Ship Channel
16:Texan land developer
260:Though a life-long
220:Sharpstown, Houston
455:The New York Times
400:The New York Times
282:Sharpstown scandal
134:Sharpstown scandal
103:Frank Wesley Sharp
53:Houston, Texas, US
35:Frank Wesley Sharp
510:Handbook of Texas
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48:(1993-04-02)
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560:1993 deaths
555:1906 births
296:John Osorio
130:Royden Oaks
59:Nationality
25:Frank Sharp
549:Categories
373:References
251:Elmer Baum
214:Sharpstown
179:Oak Forest
166:Texas City
140:Early life
126:Sharpstown
122:Oak Forest
262:Methodist
78:1925-1971
525:See also
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187:millwork
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62:American
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107:Houston
337:Even
316:Notes
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