The Gross House (Dear North Texan, winter 2010), at 113 Avenue A across from campus, was owned by my grandparents, John Milton and Cora Jane Gross.
I have been told that my grandfather was a math teacher, but I don’t know whether it was at the high school or college in Denton.
I have no idea when or how they acquired the boarding house, but I do know they were living there in the early 1930s. My grandfather died in 1941, and my grandmother continued to run the boarding house until she sold it to Mrs. Abbey around 1945.
I do not remember ever staying at the house, but I recall she had a cook named Claude (Miller?) who made the best banana pudding!
My parents, Curtis Gross ('30) and Thelma Clement Gross ('31, '51 M.S.), both graduated from North Texas. Our family was living in Alpine at the time of my father’s death in 1947.
My mother moved my sister and me to Denton during the summer of 1949 because she had family members living in Denton. “Mama Gross” was also living in Denton at that time (she died in 1951). We lived at 1004 West Hickory Street, and my sister and I attended elementary school (Sam Houston or “West Ward”) through college in Denton.
I graduated in 1960; my sister, the late Sandra Gross Hamby, graduated in 1964.
Unfortunately, I did not learn a lot about my parental grandparents while people were still living who could fill in the blanks for me. The aerial photo from the university's archives is very similar to how I remember Avenue A and the area looking when we moved to Denton in 1949.
It was a pleasure to read that there are at least three other people besides the eight surviving Gross grandchildren who still know there was once a boarding house in Denton known as the Gross House!
Beverly Gross Graham ('60)
New Boston