[Editor’s note: Merry Christmas! This week, we’re taking time off to focus on our loved ones, so we are sharing some of our favorite stories from this year. Keep an eye out for our top features from the archives as we rest and get ready for a brilliant 2019! Cheers, from Candy and the entire staff at Daltxrealestate.com!]
Bethany: When I saw the listing for this house, I knew it had to have a story. And when I met Patricia Simon, who painstakingly restored this Queen Anne Victorian with her husband Kyle, she had a treasure trove of information about the history, which is intermingled with Dallas’s own rich history. I also found it fascinating to see how they were able to combine modern sensibilities and desires with the period-specific aspects of the home.
When orthodontist Patricia Simon isn’t straightening the teeth of Lakewood residents, she tends to be restoring Dallas homes, including her home in the Peak Suburban Addition Historic District she restored with her husband, Kyle.
When the two finished their home, they turned their attention to an aging 1902 Queen Anne Victorian on Moreland Avenue that had become the victim of years of deferred maintenance and the march of time.
“It’s one of the few original Victorians left in the neighborhood,” she said one Sunday as she surveyed the completed work. “There are other old Victorians here, but many of them — not all — were moved here from other places.”
When the two began, they started by trying to suss out the original floor plan. There had been a couple of additions. When they purchased the home, it had been a single family dwelling, but still retained some of the changes from when it had been multifamily housing.
“In the thirties and forties, there was a housing shortage,” Simon explained. At one point, this was divided into four apartments, and those changes were still there.
“It was probably a boarding house,” she added.
The two also began determining what could be saved, and what would need to be replaced. “I think it’s a nod to the past, but we also realize you have to live in the present,” Simon said of what emerged as they worked.
“What we didn’t have, we found,” she said of sourcing the historic elements the front portion of the home (which was original). The lighting was sourced from Fort Worth and Alabama. When the two found a track for pocket doors where French doors had been, they sourced a period-perfect set.
The mantel in the living room was found in the attic, and had been burned at one point. From original parts and recreations, the historic fireplace took shape.
“The fireplace surround was this green tile, and I tried to find tile to match it, but couldn’t,” Simon said.
The home’s original pine floors rest beneath oak floors that had been installed sometime in the twenties. Those oak floors have been restored, and serve to bounce the abundant light coming in from windows that still open and shut using the original hardware.
Stained glass present throughout the original part of the home was also restored to its former glory, and the original trim was painstakingly restored as well.
Perhaps some of the biggest changes wrought come as a surprise, though. The grand staircase that greets all who enter from the front doors? That wasn’t original.
“The original staircase was very narrow,” Simon explained, adding that she doubted you could even get a full-sized mattress up the stairs.
Instead, they pivoted the staircase’s entry point to the living room instead of what is now the kitchen, widened it, and moved the newel posts. When one post wouldn’t work after the change, their contractor created one that matched the original.
Because of the additions constructed over the years, the roof of the home was also a somewhat haphazard jumble of peaks and pitches. Taking the old roof off and reframing to create a more pleasing (and more easily maintained) configuration was also on the agenda.
Other changes made the home extremely family friendly. Downstairs, a master suite could easily become a mother-in-law suite.
Upstairs, a large landing is a great playroom area and TV room, with another master tucked behind it and additional bedrooms and bathrooms lining the perimeter of the landing.
There are two laundry rooms – one large one upstairs, and one small hookup in the huge pantry so that kitchen linens and the laundry of the master suite dwellers don’t have to be lugged up the stairs.
The chef’s kitchen has quartz counters, custom cabinetry, stainless steel appliances and plenty of room for entertaining.
Outside, a back porch sits, overlooking an expansive yard that even has room for a pool.
But Simon didn’t just work on restoring the house, she got to work learning about the people who called it home so many years ago.
First, she learned that her 1007 Moreland Ave. home didn’t always have that address — at one point, it actually faced Swiss Avenue.
In 1902, Harrison Self built the home, but sold it to Jacob “Jake” Ullman, a German immigrant, and his wife, Nettie, by 1904. It was at this home that the two raised their daughters, Berniece and Selma. Ullman died in 1913, but by the time the girls graduated high school, the house was picked up and moved to what was essentially the back of their substantial property and turned to face Moreland.
Simon said that it appears that Nettie and the girls moved away around 1920, when the girls went to boarding school and Nettie followed, probably renting homes around the girl’s school.
“About 1924-1925, the house was pivoted over to the Moreland Avenue address from Swiss,” Simon explained. The original property stretched much further, but parcels were sold off.
As early as 1923, Simon said city directories show multiple unrelated people living in the home before it finally began showing up as four separate apartments. Additional entrances were added to the southeast side of the house and the back in the 1950s, changing the roofline.
“In fact, a hipped roof was added and sat on top of the original roof in some areas,” Simon said. Another set of stairs were added at some point, too.
When Patricia and Kyle began their work in 2015, the home was suffering from decades of neglect. But now the house is fit for a family, and the two are ready to turn it over to one. It is listed for $999,999 by Robert Blackman.
Want to see how extensive the restoration work was? We’ve created this slideshow of before and after shots, photos courtesy Patricia Simon.
