To many Shreveporters, the name A.C. Steere is best known as the namesake of the famous old Hacienda style elementary school on Youree Drive at Ockley. But Steere, who gave the land for that campus, then called the Broadmoor Grammar School in 1929 helped shape the development of Shreveport in a way few others have.

Steere, born in 1879, the son of Cyrus and Johnette Steere, as a child, he resided with his family in a large Victorian home at the southwest corner of Fairfield Avenue and Margaret Place. Later they moved a few blocks away to Southern Avenue. Like his father, Steere entered the real estate business and later became a real estate developer.

"Steere-built homes are well built homes" was Steere’s motto. During the 1920’s, the height of his real estate development career, Steere built whole neighborhoods, laying out their streets and accomplishing their annexation into the city. Some of these projects he financed himself and others were built with partners. Perhaps his most noteworthy partnership was with Elias Goldstein, with whom he developed the South Highlands and South Highlands Annex Areas. Steere also developed Broadmoor on the site of the old Peter Youree plantation. He named its principal thoroughfare, Youree Drive in honor of Captain Youree. Dixie Garden was another Steere development, this time with amore rural approach. To this day Dixie Garden retains the rural feel Steere envisioned 75 years ago. From lower income neighborhoods, such as Stoner Hill, to upper income areas such as Glen Iris, Steere build homes for all of Shreveport’s citizens.

In addition to being a real estate developer, Steere was a philanthropist. Not only did he donate the Broadmoor school site, as mentioned above, but Betty Virginia Park was given to the city by him and his partner Goldstein in honor of their daughters Betty Goldstein (later Franklin) and Virginia Steere (later Marston). Virginia Steere was named after her mother Virginia Collins Steere. A.C. Steere’s own home was built at 910 Ockley, in the South Highlands Annex area, overlooking Betty Virginia Park.

Ockley Drive was named for Steere’s father’s ancestral home in Ockley, Survey County, England. Other streets in South Highlands and Broadmoor were also named by Steere and reflect his family (Steere, Johnette, Albert, Colwell, Trabue, etc.), his friends and associates (Patton, Grover, Zeke, etc.), places his family came from (Ockley, and Stratford, England; Albany and Oneonta, NY, etc.), places where they vacationed (Broadmoor, CO; Monrovia, CA; Lakes Ontario, Huron and Erie, etc.), and historical figures (Fremont, Youree).
,br> Steere also was a director of KTBS Radio in its early days and was involved in the planning of Barksdale Field (now Barksdale Air Force Base). He also was largely responsible for inducing the Texas and Pacific Railroad to transfer a major division point from east Texas to Shreveport and was developer of the Hollywood area of Shreveport as a neighborhood for railroad workers and their families.

He chaired the City’s real estate board for several years and was a central figure on the building committee of the First Presbyterian Church when it moved from Travis Street (where the Beck Building now stands) to its present location on Jordan Street in 1926. He was also a member of the board of directors of the Commercial National Bank. Steere’s untimely and tragic death came as the result of the financial panic, which swept the nation following the crash of Wall Street in October 1929. In the summer of 1930 Steere believed himself to be financially ruined and on Tuesday, July 1 of that year, committed suicide. Early that morning he shot himself as he sat next to the swimming pool at his Ockley Drive mansion (his was one of the city’s very first private swimming pools). Only a few days later it was learned that he had been mistaken and was not ruined at all. Set back, yes, but not ruined.

Steere’s death came as a shock to the city. KTBS Radio went silent at noon the day of his death out of respect and mourning. On July 2, Steere was buried in the Mason section of Greenwood Cemetery, next to his son, A.C. Steere, Jr., who died in 1915 at the age of 3. Steere’s widow survived another 12 years, his daughter another 39.

Eventually the Broadmoor School would be renamed in his honor. Today it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, partly for its superb architectural design and partly for its connections with one of Shreveport’s and Louisiana’s most influential men of the early 20th Century. Steere was a city builder.

The A.C. Steere Park & Recreation Center on Grover Place is named in his honor.

We salute Albert Colwell Steere!