This Greenway Parks Arts and Crafts Tudor Revival by architects Fooshee and Cheek had my heart at first glance. It also had the hearts of everyone that saw it.
“I’ve never had a more popular listing or more showings on a house,” Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s agent Madeline Jobst said. That’s saying a lot when you realize Jobst has been a Realtor for more than 35 years.
Greenway Parks is on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s one of those beautiful neighborhoods filled with homes that remind me of gracious ladies. Refined, polite, always tasteful, and never ostentatious.
The Dallas Look
A handful of architects are responsible for the Dallas look. The men who built this city wanted impressive, finely crafted homes that made a statement about their place in society.
Architects James Cheek and Marion Fooshee designed not only iconic homes, but also commercial buildings. They are, perhaps, best known for the Highland Park Village shopping center. Although they are deeply associated with Spanish-Mediterranean residential designs, they also created extravagant Tudor mansions in the Park Cities.
By 1927 when this Arts and Crafts Tudor Revival was completed, they were considered two of the finest residential architects in the city.
The Showplace of Greenway Parks
When you create an exclusive new neighborhood, you always want to make a point with that first house. It needs to be representational of fine living and be a visual example of expectations. It’s not surprising that the gentlemen who purchased this land in 1925 — investor F.M. Drane and entrepreneur J.P. Stephenson — chose Fooshee and Cheek to design the first home in Greenway Parks. That home was built for Porter Lindsley, the developer and sales agent chosen by Drane and Stephenson to turn this tract of land into an exclusive neighborhood.
So, you see, this house had a job. It had to attract buyers. Considering the traction Jobst had the second it listed, Fosohee and Cheek hit a decades-long home run. Designed with ripple rock, stucco, and slate, it has the appeal of an English country cottage. At 4,119 square feet with four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and located on the greenbelt, it exemplifies the beauty and safety the developers touted in those first ads.
Jobst had 5510 Nakoma listed for $1.5 million. Homes with this sort of pedigree are seldom on the market for long. This one is in the hands of happy new owners already. When you find a home like this Arts and Crafts Tudor Revival, the lesson is to be prepared with your offer immediately.
