The Rabb Plantation Home, southeast of Brownsville, Texas, along the twisting Rio Grande River. The house, in Queen Anne style, was built in 1892, during the waning years of the steamboat era, by land and cattle baron Frank Rabb and his wife Lillian. Because South Texas was sparsely developed at the time, the region’s mode of transportation to other cities was the boats that traversed the Rio Grande. Overland travel was difficult, so Brownsville’s riverboats also connected the region to other port cities like Corpus Christi, Galveston and New Orleans, which heavily influenced the architecture of the time. The home rests in a sabal-palm and birding sanctuary, and palms, harvested for their edible hearts, were one of the crops grown on the Robb Plantation and shipped to ports along the Gulf Coast.