Dallas Architecture Blog discusses Modern architecture and Mid Century Modern
Homes, Dallas Neighborhoods, Dallas Real Estate and the Aesthetics of the City.

Ron Wommack and Client Discover Location

What Ron Wommack and his client realized was this rather dowdy spur of houses on very high ground adjacent to an abandoned railroad track would soon be a site overlooking the Santa Fe Trail, a running, walking, bicycling trail from White Rock Lake to Fair Park. What was a lesser street now became a very desirable hidden street relating to the Santa Fe Trail.

Homes Either Diminish or Enhance a Site

Often locations are overlooked. Just as often a commonplace home is designed and built on beautiful land that diminishes the site. I have seen houses built next to a ravine, creek or a small lake with the master bedroom closet or garage on the water side of the house because that is what the plans called for, anticipating a generic lot, or the architect designed using only the lot dimensions not taking into consideration the surroundings.

The Best Homes Accentuate A Site

The Late Robert James, FAIA, former president of the Dallas Chapter, AIA, found a small irregular lot with difficult terrain rejected by all builders. James designed a modern home configured to the lot and still with vast views of green that gave one the sense that you were on a very large piece of property.

Ron Wommack Designed Home Reinterprets Location

The old traditional homes are classically lined up facing the street, and the ones with balconies or porches are facing away from the railroad tracks at the bottom of the ravine. Now the Santa Fe tracks have been removed and the Santa Fe Trail is being constructed. The orientation of the house still has a front forward facade the street with full length corner window walls providing a view of the Santa Fe Trail and park, but the orientation of the home is towards the trail and surrounding wooded areas.

The front door opens to an exterior corridor paneled with the trail that leads past walls of glass to the front door on the side of the house. A first floor screened porch and balcony porches are also oriented towards the new Santa Fe Park and Trail. A wall for art and with a few windows is on the side of the house towards the residential cut-through street a few houses away.

This modern home will transform this corridor of short streets.

Some successful architect designed modern homes stand alone in a one-off location. Other architect designed contemporary homes have the ability to transform an entire area.

Visually attractive and interesting modern homes attract attention.

People start thinking about architecture in a new way and the people start thinking about the location in a new way.

Dallas AIA Modern Tour

As interest in modern homes increases, an expanded audience drives ever increasing number of home tours emphasizing modern homes. The Dallas Chapter of AIA selects modern homes across the city which allows the public to learn about architecture and about Dallas neighborhoods. Most people did not even know this home existed before the Dallas AIA tour. Those on tour loved the home and loved the location. The word spreads, aspirations grow and we will soon discover many new great modern homes on the Santa Fe Trail.

The sophisticated client whose life has always revolved around art and architecture has accumulated many friends deeply involved in the arts and the city of Dallas. What better way to start the year than a New Year’s Day party in a fabulous modern home surrounded by the homeowner’s appreciative friends reveling in this architectural success and contribution to Dallas.

See additional photographs of this Ron Womack desined modern home on FaceBook.com/modernhomes.

I often see the same families purchase, renovate or build a succession of increasingly architecturally significant homes. While a person cannot collect homes in the same way that a collector can acquire paintings or sculpture, the instinct is the same. The curiosity, passion and desire to live in and around extraordinary beauty and profound design is the same whether for a collector of art or a patron of architecture. In future blog articles I will discuss some of the great family lineages of owners of significant architect designed homes, both modern and eclectic.

International Style Home

Here we see an International Style home designed for a young couple with five children. The couple hired James Nagle, a graduate of Stanford with an architecture degree from MIT and a co-founder of the Chicago architecture firm Nagle Hartray. Built in 1976, this home in Bent Tree was the finest example of International Style architecture since Stanley Marcus had Roscoe Dewitt design his International Style home in 1937. Set on two acres along a greenbelt, this modern home is sleek, stark and yet comfortable for a family. Some think that clean-lined and hard-edged modern is only appropriate for highrises, urban couples or fastidious style makers. This modern home in Far North Dallas shows that a home can have a compelling design, a pastoral setting, bedrooms for multiple children, expansive yards, gardens, pools and courts to accommodate activities of families and friends. The result is a home dramatic for entertaining, utilitarian for a family and aesthetically attractive through the decades.

The same couple, when the children were grown, again hired architect James Nagle in collaboration with Robert Neylan to design another modern home. This home combined the latest technology, building materials and construction techniques with timeless and more accessible materials and fixtures. Where modern houses are often associated with isolated locations, modern residential parks, or clusters in urban locations, this modern home is right at home in the leafy and traditional suburb of Highland Park.

While the architect was sensitive to the setbacks and scale of the homes designed in a European tradition around them, this home exudes modernity. As you approach the front door you begin to experience a subtle and sublime transformation, a different environment, one that is familiar, but expressed in such a new way. A compilation of stainless steel, teak and granite and Belgian glass continues that aura as you enter. A visitor in the home feels exhilaration and tranquility at the same time. At 10,000 square feet, the size of this Highland Park Translucens House is somewhat larger than the Bent Tree home, but occupies a much smaller parcel of land. As a result, the Highland Park house does not look outward in the same way that the Bent Tree house does, but looks inward into a courtyard. The view of the street is restrained by translucent glass that can be darkened for more privacy Extra bedrooms were eliminated, and additional space was allowed for returning family members in the form of vertically and horizontal open galleries, courtyards, and public spaces bridged by glass and connected by stairs.

Here is an example of two homes created for the same family: same architect, different needs and different settings, but both modern homes that continue to earn appreciation, credibility and applause.

See Bent Tree modern home Future Offering

There is something about walking across a footbridge to the front door of an architect designed home that provokes excitement, glamour and mystery. Even my favorite architectural exhibition that I saw at the Royal Academy in London was models and drawings of several centuries of houses incorporated into bridges – houses actually on and part of the bridges.

While in Dallas, we do not have houses on top of bridges. Nevertheless, we do have extraordinary homes in Dallas where the approach is a walking bridge.

Walking Across a Bridge to a Home is Both Primitive and Sublime.

This pedestrian passage subliminally evokes traversing a medieval moat for ultimate protection, or sashaying down a red carpet, or gliding along a fashion catwalk to thunderous applause. One’s environment changes by this transition in a way that is subtle and savory. A footbridge slows down the transition from the outside environment to the inside environment. For a few moments one is suspended between these two realities.

Robert Johnson Perry Architect Designed Bridge House in Preston Hollow

Architect Robert Johnson Perry designed a home accessed by a footbridge in Mayflower Estates, part of the Preston Hollow estate neighborhood.

Here Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Schepps took the corner ledge of a several acre lot and retained Robert Johnson Perry to design a home for just the two of them. Robert Johnson Perry was an accomplished modernist who designed many modern homes that have since been renovated by important architects and designers, including designer Emily Summer’s own home.

Just as modernist architect Howard Meyer could take his classical modern proportions to the Colonial home he designed on Cochran Chapel, Robert Johnson Perry was able to bring his modern sensibility to this house with a French influence. You can visit our Architecturally Significant section and see more photographs and information on this Mayflower Estates home.

George Woo Built Bridge House on Highest Point in Dallas

Another architecturally significant home that has received international attention, articles in Architectural Digest and Luxe – Interiors and Design is a home designed by architect George Woo at the highest point in Dallas County.

Here the footbridge extends the axis that runs through the symmetrically perfect preliminary structures and provides the elevated passage to the front door of the primary house. This bridge begins to give you views of the valley and endless forest and also gives you a visual momentum to anticipate the views in the house and the elevated terrace at the end of the axis where the distant lake and one hundred mile views fill the horizon. Crossing the footbridge, one is transported from a city just 17 miles away to a frame of mind that takes you totally out of a dense metropolitan area.

Antoine Predock Creates Bridge and Similar Effect in Highland Park Home

Architect Antoine Predock, in the park setting of Exall Lake and Highland Park, conveys this same sensation by extending the elevated footbridge from the rear of the house into treetops overlooking several acres of private and public park land. This footbridge creates a great counterpoint to the front door, which is just a few feet from a mundane suburban street and is encased in a well-planted bunker. Here the mystery starts at the front door, the interior of the house excites and the footbridge calms and provokes the imagination.

Jim Wiley and Bud Oglesby Design Bridge Home in Highland Park

The best-known bridge house in Dallas was designed by architect Jim Wiley and architect Bud Oglesby in the 1950s.

Jim Wiley and Bud Oglesby chose a location along the Turtle Creek to build a small glass cube with bedrooms that could also serve as balconies for musical performances. Here the Highland Park environment is so gorgeous, you want to traverse the bridge to get closer to the home nestled behind the curving creek and go inside to intensify the feeling. You can also more photographs of this home at Kelley Residence.

James Pratt Designed Bridge to Top of Home

Architect James Pratt designed this architecturally significant home in Bluffview in the 1950s. Steeply descending topography provided a perfect site, set back and lower than the hidden street. Here James Pratt designed a footbridge that leads to the middle of the upper level of the home where you enter. The bridge connects to a covered balcony creating an outdoor living space that wraps around the home, immersing one into the lush environment.

Footbridges Provide Solution to Some Impossible Sites and Accentuate Drama of Site in Others

Often the most difficult topographically complicated residential sites beget the most interesting and successful homes. The houses mentioned in this blog article are the result of dramatic but difficult sites. Some of these houses were designed on sites where most people assumed a home could never be built. A footbridge often becomes the link from the impossible to the successful.

Incorporated as an integral part of the architectural design, footbridges are romantic and practical, used for centuries and are still very modern.

The Scott Lyons-designed home recently purchased in Highland Park is a perfect example of what I expressed in my earlier blog post “Best Architecture, Bad Times”. In a normal economy this would have been purchased and torn down within days of going on the market instead of being purchased for renovation.

Home in Estate Offered at Lot Value

The trustee of the estate had the property appraised and discovered all the value was in the .25 acre of land. The trustee had no idea who designed the home and the listing agent originally considered this home just an old 1970s home of no importance, not a Texas Modern home of great importance. As a result, the property was put in MLS with no interior photographs, emphasizing lot dimensions as it was assumed a builder would buy this tired residence as a teardown just for the land.

Fortunately the current economic climate has shut down any purchase activity from builders looking for lots. Only a few people even looked at the home the first few weeks it was on the market.

Douglas Newby Associate, Realtor Connie Harkins Identifies House as Scott Lyons Designed

When Connie Harkins, an associate who works with me, first went through the house she quickly called me and said, “You have to see this house. It is obviously designed by Scott Lyons.” She was right. Scott Lyons-designed fingerprints were found throughout the house. The front door, fascia, the stone floors, woodwork, soft Mexican brick, ceiling treatments, filtered skylights in the hallways and floor-to-ceiling doors were all examples of materials and design elements that Scott Lyons used at 10240 Gaywood and other prominent Highland Park and Preston Hollow homes that he designed. We mentioned to the listing agent that Scott Lyons was certainly the architect that designed the home. To the listing agent’s credit, she asked the trustee to research the files where they discovered correspondence between Scott Lyons and the original homeowner, verifying that Scott Lyons was the architect.

Marketing Adjusted to Include Scott Lyons as Architect

The listing agent again, to her credit, changed the marketing course. She had the interior cleaned up, and more importantly, identified Scott Lyons as the architect in the MLS description of the home. Immediately after that, a great number of potential homebuyers came to see the home. Besides talking with the listing agent, I knew interest had soared in the property as over 200 unique visitors had been directed to my site when they Googled Scott Lyons architect. Many of these potential buyers liked the home enough that they called in their architects, interior designers and contractors to give them ideas for renovation and estimates for cost. Within four weeks of Scott Lyons being identified as the architect, the trustee of the estate had several offers to choose from. The new owner will be restoring this significant Highland Park home, preserving the work of Scott Lyons, one of Dallas’ great architects.

Most Good Homes are Never Torn Down if Potential Buyers have the Opportunity to See the Home and the Time to Understand the Home

Architecturally significant homes on very valuable land are vulnerable, but not because buyers do not desire them, as is the case with the Scott Lyons house, buyers need time to evaluate and understand the home. They need the time for architects, interior designers and contractors to give them ideas on both design and cost. In a normal market a builder knows the lot dimensions and can make a quick offer sight unseen. The real estate agent, as discussed in Freakonomics, has very little economic incentive to tell the seller that they can probably sell the home for an additional $200,000 if they give the buyers who will renovate the home a chance to look at it. The agent might make an additional $5,000 on a higher sale, but will have to spend more than that in time and marketing materials. And often a listing agent will be working directly with a builder so they actually would make a larger fee on a lot sale than if the property sold to an individual working with another agent.

Sellers and the Community Benefit When Time is Taken to Market a Home.

Preservation of the best architecture is successful when the marketplace is not abandoned prematurely. When the market is hot, lot buyers will always be available, but homeowners desiring an architecturally significant home will always pay more.

You are probably wondering where the president is moving…

…so am I. This puts me in an akward position because as a real estate broker specializing in Highland Park, Preston Hollow and Dallas estate properties, I am often asked by friends and clients if I know where the President will be moving. Sometimes when I say no, I will be told by these same people where he is moving. Other times I get a strange look, questioning why I wouldn’t know, when everyone else seems to know where President Bush will be moving. Let me explain. When rumors first began, I spoke to the person who I considered closest to the President’s family and who I trusted most. I didn’t ask if the rumors of where he bought a home were true, but only if it was true that President and Mrs. Bush had already bought a property in Dallas.

Rumours proven to be untrue

I was told with certainty that they had not bought a property and had not yet begun to look. I decided then that eventually a rumor of a presidential purchase would be true, but I would rather be wrong once than wrong a dozen times jumping on every attractive rumor. That said, I think the President, at this time, may have already bought a property or is seriously considering his options. So I am going to do two things. First, share with you the least publicized rumor, one I heard 20 months ago, and my favorite, because it would have been a pretty good location for the President. This is a property on Meadowood, around the corner from Rockbrook. Here, there is a lot of land and a couple of structures that would work well for security. It is in Preston Hollow, his old neighborhood and where he lived when he launched his business and political success.

Dallas home most suited for George and Laura Bush

The second thing I will share is the property in Dallas that I think is best suited for George and Laura Bush.
In other words, if they were to call me and say, “We would like to buy a property in Dallas, what would you recommend?” After I assured them that it will be manageable for them to buy a property without word leaking, I would normally ask relevant questions about their lives, tastes, background, desires, previous homes, schools, interests, and family so I would have an intellectual and intuitive idea about what they would enjoy. Since this is the President and First Lady and we all know much about them, and since they are presumably busy, I would make the following recommendation right out of the chute.

Preston Hollow Estate Area

The house I would recommend is located in the Preston Hollow estate area on a hidden, little traveled street within a few blocks of major transportation arteries with quick access to airports, medical facilities or to Crawford.

Texas Modern

The home is architect designed which would be particularly attractive to Laura Bush as she is very interested in art and architecture.

The Texas Modern style, unassuming but aesthetically relevant, has over 10,000 square feet so it can handle fundraisers for the Bush Library, and is a gracious space for foreign dignitaries, or reunions for the extended Bush family.

Scott Lyons Architect

It has an architect designed 3,800 square foot guest house that would work perfectly for security detail or secretarial staff. It is built on bedrock with piers drilled deeply in the rock, in contrast to so many houses in Dallas sitting precariously on expansive Dallas soil.

Architect Scott Lyons, a protégé of David Williams and O’Neil Ford, designed the home, appealing to the indigenous qualities of early Texas homes. Scott Lyons is an architect responsible for some of the most important architect designed residences in Dallas, including the Highland Park home and the country home for the city’s leading philanthropists and civic leaders, Margaret McDermott and her late husband Eugene McDermott.

2.63 acres of trees, creek and lake

The potential Bush home sits on over 2.5 acres of land along a creek and next to a small lake. This beautiful site is also benefited by the neighboring 15-acre and 25-acre estate properties owned by supporters of the President. My thought is the neighboring estate owners would allow the President to develop an off-road biking trail through the woods of their property.

Ideal Space for Art Collection

The interior space is perfect for President and Mrs. Bush’s art collection. The ceilings are tall, walls of windows allow voluminous rooms to be filled with light, continuous interior and exterior walls of soft Mexican brick reflect the region, cross-cut white oak panels add warmth to the rooms and white gallery walls are ideal for the vibrant and colorful art collection by artist Pamela Nelson. This elaborately engineered and incredibly built home has been meticulously cared for by the original builder, who inspects the house twice a week to check on and maintain its condition. President and Mrs. Bush would enjoy this home, and their friends and family would enjoy them living here. It is a home that is pure Texas, modest but substantial, well-built and aesthetically refined, designed in an indigenous Texas architectural style, on plenty of land, and looking over ravines, creeks, lakes, and a distant view of residential private park land.

Can you think of a better home for George and Laura Bush?

There are many people who know the Bush’s better than I, but I remain confident that these people will agree that this would be the best home in Dallas for President and Mrs. Bush. However, so as not to close the discussion, I would love to hear from anyone who has an idea of a house that would be more suitable than the one that I have just discussed.