Hope Floats House

At the corner of East Eighth and Olive in Smithville stands the house Sandra Bullock's character came home to in Hope Floats, the 1998 film that put this town on the map and eventually onto the sign at its edge. It is the McCollum Chapman Trousdale House, built in 1908 in a Neoclassical style for J. H. McCollum, with a deep columned porch and the kind of proportions that read immediately as a family house with history in it. It stands at the end of Olive Street with its back garden running down toward the Colorado River, which is why the film could shoot in every direction from it without ever finding a modern building in frame. The film was released in May 1998, and people have been finding their way to this corner ever since, which the street has borne with reasonable patience. One production detail has stuck to it permanently. The house had a swimming pool in the back garden, which did not suit a story about a woman returning home broke to her mother's house, so the crew covered the whole thing over for filming. The family who own the house live in it. It is private property, and it is admired from the street. Smithville has done well out of the film business since. Terrence Malick shot much of The Tree of Life here, and the house Brad Pitt's character lives in is a couple of blocks from this one. Bernie was filmed here too. The locations sit within walking distance of Main Street, which is itself the parade route in the film's Festival of Lights sequence.