What could be more interesting than living in a home with history? Especially when it’s a completely renovated 1924 Greenland Hills Tudor!
Delving into who used to live in a home is like a treasure hunt. It’s also often exhilarating and inspiring. I like to imagine the talent that has soaked into the walls and floorboards of a historic home — the creative challenges met and overcome in each room, the thoughts, the conversations, and the music.
Ah! The music!
This Greenland Hills Tudor was the home of musician David Guion. While you may not be familiar with his name, you’ll know the song he made famous. Guion is responsible for the all-time Western classic and favorite song of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Home on the Range.”
Guion spent his boyhood growing up with cowboys on his father’s ranch in Ballinger, Texas. His family fostered his early musical interest and sent him by train every week to study piano in San Angelo. By the time Guion was 20, he was in Vienna under the tutelage of the great Leopold Godowsky, often referred to as the “Buddha of the Piano.”
To think a little boy from West Texas would be one of the first to break down barriers between classical and popular music with icons like Bing Crosby singing his songs and Arturo Toscanini playing them is almost beyond belief.
But it’s true.
Author and historian A.C. Greene wrote the following about Guion and “Home on the Range” in the Dallas Morning News in 1992:
As for David Guion, his skillful arrangement was what made the song the American favorite it has become. The lyrics were believed written by a Kansas homesteader, Brewster Higley, in 1873. Don Kelly then put the words to a tune. In 1904 words and music were issued together for the first time with the title My Arizona Home by William Goodwin. Texan John Lomax’s famed 1910 anthology, Cowboy Songs, called it “the cowboy’s national anthem.”
David Guion was the son of Judge John I. and Armour Fentress Guion, and he early showed his musical genius. He said that at a tender age, a nice Ballinger woman paid him $1 every Saturday to come play for her family. He did so until his mother discovered that the “family home’ was a brothel.
He was the first American composer to collect, arrange and publish Negro spirituals, cowboy songs, old fiddle tunes, and breakdowns. A collection of his works is at Baylor University.
Guion’s arrangement of “Home on the Range “came from his production “Prairie Echoes” at the Roxy Theater in New York. It featured ropers and cowboy dances and was so successful that NBC broadcast a coast-to-coast hour-long radio program. Ever the showman, Guion, kitted up as a cowboy, arrived for the live show in a Cadillac with a police escort. Needless to say, he stopped all the traffic on Fifth Avenue. Guion heralded the emergence of an entire generation of singing cowboys that appeared in Western films for over a decade.
In 1920, after his father’s death, the family moved to Dallas and into this 2,655-square-foot Greenland Hills Tudor sometime in the 1930s. The house was considered large for the 1920s, with four bedrooms and a large open living space that was almost unheard of at the time. Guion always considered this house his home, and after living in New York and Pennsylvania, he eventually returned to live here full time until his death in 1981.
Talent always draws talent. So, I wasn’t surprised when Allie Beth Allman listing agent Maribeth Messineo Peters told me interior designer Bonnee Sharp had also lived in this home. Sharp is best known for Bon Ton Studio, her incredible hand-printed, on-demand textile collection in collaboration with F. Schumacher and Co. Who better to bring a fresh look to this beloved charming Greenland Hills Tudor?
“Bonnee primarily made cosmetic changes in the house as the 1924 bones were so good,” Peters said. “She created the dot tile bathroom and the charming vaulted ceiling, wood-planked upstairs bedroom.”
It’s now a move-in-ready charmer awaiting the next round of talent!
Peters has 5526 Monticello Ave. listed for $799,500. I think it’s safe to bet that in this house, “seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”
