Dallas Eclectic Architecture, Pre-1950
Dallas architects, in the first half of the twentieth century, were influenced by a variety styles found across the country. Dallas architects were also influenced by European travels and studies and by prominent architects who came to Dallas from the East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest to design important homes for their Dallas clients.
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Featured Highland Park Historic Home
This English Country style four bedroom, three and one half-bath home has 4,000 sf and is placed on .23 acres, is offered for sale by Douglas Newby.
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Society architects from the 1880s to the 1920s often studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts in France, thus the name, Beaux Arts style. Classical forms and proportions were the basis of these elaborately decorated and embellished structures that held so much appeal to the industrialists desiring lavish homes.
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Entrances, windows and cornices of Colonial Revival homes are emphasized. Their front door often has a decorative and embellished pediment and the house if often lined with pairs of windows. Anton Korn designed 4700 Preston on 7.7 acres in 1917.
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6801 Baltimore was designed by Hal Thomson for George T. and Isabel Brown Lee in the Spring of 1929. The solid brick exterior walls are reminiscent of the Georgian style buildings that can be seen in the distance.
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This style was developed by the Green brothers in California. The front porch is supported by tapered columns and open bracketed eaves are distinguishing features of this style found in Junius Heights, Vickery Place, Winnetka Heights and scattered through the older neighborhoods of Dallas.
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The soft lines of the roof eave, the rustic carpentry and the casually complex facade allows this very grand home with the largest stained glass window in the Historic District to still come across as an English rural home.
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In this style you see steeply pitched roofs, ornate carvings, dramatic chimneys and arched windows and doorways.
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French Eclectic homes designed primarily between 1915 and 1945 had steeply pitched roofs and flared eaves and the homes had some decorative half timbering, but not excessively used as in the Tudor homes. Often they had a tower with a conical roof. They varied widely in styles derived from different parts of France but they lacked the classical direction of the French eclectic homes built in the second half of the twentieth century.
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French Renaissance connotes the revival of French homes with Renaissance detailing.
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4324 St. Johns was designed by Hal Thomson in 1917. This Georgian home has been beautifully renovated, preserving many of the original features while making it more accommodating to current needs.
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CD Hill designed this home in 1909 for his family. In Munger Place, all the homes start with a Prairie-style theme and become designed or embellished in various styles including this Italian Renaissance or in many cases, Neo-Classical Craftsman, Mission and Mediterranean.
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Designed in 1916, this Italian Renaissance home shows the virtuosity of Hal Thomson and the many eclectic styles in which he was successful.
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The original owner traveled with architect Ralph Bryan throughout East Texas and Louisiana to be inspired and agree on the design for the home they were planning to build on Rawlins.
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The grandeur and grace of Beverly Drive has been defined for almost 100 years by the Mediterranean style homes invoking
opulence and prestige reminiscent of Beverly Hills, California. You'll find classic architectural idioms and Mediterranean style in these Highland Park Estate Homes.
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4323 Overhill, built by Hugh Prather in 1923 has a stunning arched stained glass window framed by two Spanish Colonial carved columns and extended capitals. The largest stained glass window in Highland Park is possible because of the 30-foot ceilings in this section of the home. Dozens of patterns of brightly colored randomly laid mosaic tile are found throughout the house. You will see mosaic tile also on the dome at The Mansion, another Turtle Creek house.
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Several homes in Dallas were designed to replicate Mount Vernon. The Hunt Mansion survives; Governor Clements home has been torn down.
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Neoclassical elements found in this home include the roofline balustrades, the full height porch supported by two story classical columns with Corinthian capitals. This home has a curved portico, which is found in very few neoclassical homes.
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There are many Texas interpretations of French and neoclassical homes. There are others that are more influenced by the interpretations of the East Coast architects.
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These fanciful houses are influenced by architectural elements of farmhouses across France. Some are ornate and embellished, others are simple and rustic.
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No other setting in Dallas would be as perfect for this Normandy Stone farmhouse. It is placed on top of a hill with no driveway or walkway interrupting the lawn that comes down to the small dead end street in a neighborhood you can only approach over the historic stone bridge that is framed by creeks and built on stone.
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The Millermore House is the oldest remaining house in Dallas and best represents the collection of houses in Old City Park. It was originally built with a one-story porch by pioneer settler William B. Miller who received a 640 acre Texas land grant. When antebellum homes became fashionable, his daughter modified the house with its current two story columns. His son built the Miller shingle house on Cedar Springs in 1904.
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The first Prairie style home Frank Lloyd Wright designed was in River Forest, Illinois, in 1893. This Winslow house is much closer in mass and style than the later Prairie style homes for which Frank Lloyd Wright is better known. A front door and side lights, horizontal bands of trim separating floors and wide roof overhangs are found in the Prairie style interpretations that swept across the Midwest and certainly in Dallas between 1905 and 1920.
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Commonly found in the Northeast, this home on Cedar Springs remains Dallas' best example. Miller’s father received a 640-acre land grant where the Millermore house was built.
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This style developed in the areas Spain colonized, which included Florida and the Southwest. Buildings in the Spanish Colonial style were still being built in the 1800s, but by the late 1800s Victorian and Beaux Arts style eclectic homes came to the forefront. The resurgence of Spanish Colonial architecture came not from the historical precedence in Texas, but was imported from the architectural movement in California.
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The stacked duplex is a popular Dallas architectural convention. Often, these duplexes have similar elements of Tudor cottages or Spanish Eclectic homes. A series of these homes are found in several East Dallas and Lakewood neighborhoods, along with Highland Park, University Park and Oak Lawn. These duplex residences give each family a full floor, high ceilings, many windows and a front balcony porch or balcony to enjoy.
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This Chicago style of architecture is most likely to show up in Dallas on bands of trim and molding.
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The first home on Swiss was built in 1905. The only frame house on the street, it was designed just two years after some of the Victorian homes on the Wilson Block. The dominant feature of this home is its neoclassical facade with the full width wrap-around lower porch and full height entrance columns. While Prairie style was the underlying theme for Munger Place, this home had a center hallway, extra tall ceilings, smaller former rooms, and libraries organized off the center hall. The wrap-around porch and porte cochere express more verticality than the long horizontal massing you find in many of the other homes.
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Hal Thomson designed this Tudor home for Leonard Volk, developer of Volk Estates. It was the first home built in the subdivision. Renovating architects include such masters as Beran and Shelmire in 1972, John Mullen in 1988 and James Pratt in 1992.
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5427 Morningside captures the charm of the several hundred Tudor cottages on the M Streets, now a conservation district. These brick homes with irregular stone ornamental inlays have a screened porch on one side, stained glass on the other, and a front door in the middle, close to the chimney with the intricate brickwork and tile cap. A living room, dining room and kitchen line up on one side and two bedrooms with a shared bath on the other. From 1975 until the present, attics have often been converted to living quarters, bathrooms have been added and side porches closed in. The rhythm of these similar but individually distinctive homes continues to provide great appeal.
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