There are not many people better suited to comment on Highland Park architecture and history than Dallas architect Wilson Fuqua. If you take a glance at his website, you will see the source of inspiration for his own work are the early 20th-century homes of Highland Park, University Park, and Preston Hollow. He also had a hand in updating this Hal Thomson-designed English Country house at 3801 Gillon Ave., which is only fitting because, as one of the most important historicist architects in Dallas today, he knows the proper way to treat a historic home.
“This is my favorite house, per square foot, anywhere,” Fuqua said. “Architecturally, it hits all the fundamental aspects of what makes good architecture. The scale is right, and it’s beautifully proportioned.”
The English Country house was designed by Thompson in 1917 for Lawrence Albert Hart and Grace McLain Hart, owners of the Hart Furniture Company at 1933 Elm Street in Dallas. Briggs Freeman listing agent Joan Eleazer did an enormous amount of research and discovered that the Harts were included in the 1925 first edition of the Dallas Blue Book. Think of it as the Dallas version of Britain’s Debrett’s Peerage.
It’s one of the most significant homes in Highland Park, not just for its architectural provenance but also for its place in history.
Hal Thomson And Highland Park
You see, Thomson came to Dallas in 1908. He could not have timed his arrival better because only a year before, John Armstrong and his sons-in-law, Edgar Flippen and Hugh Prather, were planning an elite neighborhood on the northern edge of the city. It was to be called Highland Park. This was the beginning of what can only be called the golden age of Dallas. Thompson became the go-to residential architect for the next 40 years, and his designs defined the look of Highland Park.
“Sometimes houses are so good you try to respect them and not change them much,” Fuqua said. “This is one of those homes. It lives beautifully and is simply outstanding. It even has a faux thatched roof. which you seldom see. There were not many to begin with, and there are very few left.”
The Hart house demonstrates a symmetrical composition, with a narrow central bay flanked by a series of receding wall planes. The careful spatial manipulation illustrates the architect’s sophisticated sensibility to geometric discipline. The home’s divergent repertoire includes a Classical Revival entrance portico, second-floor sash windows and shutters that illustrate Colonial Revival influences, and an impressive Palladian window at the second-floor stair hall. English influences are evident both in the vertical proportions of the ground-level windows and in the ‘rolled’ roof eaves.
Great American Suburbs: The Homes of the Park Cities, Dallas, by Virginia Savage McAlester, Willis Cecil Winters, and Prudence Mackintosh.
Bigger is Not Always Better
These classic homes offer stability, tradition, permanence, and elegance, which have been taken for granted in the past decade. People have been living in large spec homes. They have lost sight of what it even means to live in one that is architecturally significant and why that is particularly relevant today. There is a point where bigger is not better.
“If you analyze what it is like to cook in a kitchen, for instance, larger does not improve the experience,” Fuqua said. “We opened this kitchen to the breakfast room, and it’s enough. The house has no wasted space. It’s all usable, and it feels very open and is very light with floor-to-ceiling windows on the north and south sides. That simplicity and the lightness of the house are somewhat uncommon for that era. It feels pastoral.”
One of the reasons for that pastoral feeling is that the house is concealed by a clever boxwood hedge with a walk-through arch opening that gives just a glimpse of the home. Landscape architect Charles J. Stick, from Charlottesville, Virginia, was instrumental in the design of the gardens, and Fuqua was also involved in the conceptual design of the landscape.
The land originally sloped from the street to the driveway. It was leveled, and a court was created between the hedge and the driveway. This made it feel like the height of the hedge was raised when, in reality, the ground was lowered by almost four feet, allowing this home to offer the magic appeal of a secret garden.
“As light-filled and luxurious as modern houses, it has something that few can equal: an aura of history and permanence — the ultimate setting for the next generations of gatherings, milestones and quiet moments.”
Joan Eleazer, Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty
This is a home that defines Highland Park, and we can only hope a prospective buyer understands the importance of keeping the character and history of the neighborhood intact.
Eleazer has this architecturally significant English Country house at 3801 Gillon Ave. listed for $11.995 million.
