ALLEN HOUSE DETAILS AND HISTORY ( Page 2 )

Exterior

The primary elevation of the clapboard-sided Allen House faces north on Fairmount Street, its asymmetrical facade separated into three horizontal and three vertical divisions. The pair of carved wood entry doors, each with single lights of leaded glass and surmounted by a stained glass transom, is located in the central division. Brick steps access the wood-floor porch, the roof of which shields the central and east divisions of the main facade. The large mass of the house's central hipped roof is broken by a gabled attic dormer and window located above the entry.

West of the entry is a projecting two-story bay topped by a gable roof, the shingled pediment supported by pierced brackets. The clipped corners of the bay frame a pair of 1 x 1 wood frame windows on the second floor, tall and narrow in configuration as is characteristic of 19th century forms. A matching pair of windows below on the first story was replaced, probably in the 1940s, by a fixed, multi-pane display window. East of the entry division is the projecting bay of an engaged octagon tower, its conical roof and third story projection evidently removed before 1945. Three of the five projecting faces of the bay are filled by 1 x 1 wood sash windows on both stories.

The visor-shaded, flat roofed porch springs from the projecting west bay, sweeps around the corner bay octagon shape, and continues along the east elevation to end at the diningroom bay. The porch roof is supported in this area by a series of simple Doric wood columns, which may perhaps have replaced earlier turned pillars that would have matched those remaining on the rear elevations of the house.

The highly textured exterior materials are characteristic of high style Queen Anne design. The frieze is a jigsawn pattern of diamonds and triangles, cornerboards mark each turning in a wall angle, shingles in gables and on the porch visor roof are a combination of fishscale and round-end, and cornices and other mouldings are smooth, yet complex in profile. The house may have lost additional, typical Late Victorian turned work and it probably originally sported a metal roof cresting. An 1889 architectÕs rendering of the new residence of Richard Allen's friend and business associate William B. Gano at the corner of Oak Lawn and Cedar Springs Road appears remarkably similar in scale, plan, massing and detailing to the Allen House. The richly textured Gano House no doubt influenced the design of Richard and Grace Allen's the following year.

The east elevation, facing Mahon Street, is also divided into three vertical parts. The central division is a deeply projecting bay whose front elevation is a gentle curve which projects forward on the first story. The curved wall is set back under an arcaded integral porch supported by turned pillars and balustrade on the second story, and the whole supports a gable roof with a shingled pediment pierced by a small 1 x 1 attic window. The rounded shingles of the porch visor roof continue in a band dividing the first and second stories of the projecting diningroom bay, then continue in a new plane as the hipped roof of the porch that wraps the rear of the house. South of the visually prominent diningroom bay, the porch roof shades the entrance to Dr. Allen's home office, reached by brick steps.

The south elevation is the rear of the house. Its decorative detailing may represent the most intact remnants of turned woodwork on the dwelling, with curved brackets and intricate spindlework balusters and friezes decorating the ground story porch extending the full width of the elevation and a second story observation porch topped by a simple shed roof. A shallow gable projects from the center of the elevation, with a single, 1 x 1 attic window. A second small gable extends above the roof of the first story porch.

The west elevation is the simplest and least complex. Again, the center of three major vertical divisions is marked by a projecting, gable-roofed element, the pediment enveloping a 1 x 1 window supported by a three-sided, two-story bay with 1 x 1 windows in each of the chamfered facades of the bay.

Interior

The interior of the house has an irregular plan divided into a number of public, private and service rooms arranged around a central hall. The quality of interior finishes and woodwork is significant and nearly original. All formal rooms and family private quarters are enclosed in lath and plaster walls; some portions have had gypsum board overlaid above the plaster, while other rooms retain their original plaster finishes.

Coal burning fireplaces, with glazed ceramic hearths and surrounds, are located in each bedroom on the second floor, the east parlor flanking the entry hall, the diningroom and Dr. Allen's medical office behind the diningroom. Remarkably intact and unpainted woodwork decorates the formal entry hall, stair to the second floor, the diningroom (certainly the most exuberantly detailed room in the house) and Doctor Allen's surgery behind it. Turned and beaded spindlework screens fill the rectangular transom over the double width opening (missing its twin leaf doors) to the east parlor. A similarly detailed fanlight screen tops the matching opening to the west parlor, which is dominated by a corner-placed white marble fireplace.

Summary

All major design and construction occurred during the occupancy of Richard and Grace Allen from 1889 to 1912. Fabricated in a craftsmanlike way, possibly by Grace Allen's brother William, the details (particularly interior and exterior woodwork) of the Allen House are unmatched in any other dwelling from the same period remaining in Dallas. Changes since the residency of the Allens, save perhaps for removal of an apparent turret, were minor, and the house retains a high degree of architectural integrity and conveys a strong sense of time and place.

The Richard Wisdom and Grace Simpson Allen House at 2603 Fairmount Street is significant as probably the most distinguished, high-style example of large Queen Anne-style domestic architecture remaining in Dallas. The home retains much of its integrity and particularly its outstanding exterior turned and jigsawn decoration, and interior art glass, woodwork and detailing. The elegant two-and-one-half story frame house, located on a prominent corner lot in the area developed in the late 1880s and 1890s by the North Dallas Improvement Company, relates to late 19th century European and American architectural influences in Texas. Built in 1889 -1890, the house is also important for its association with Dr. R.W. Allen and Grace Allen, representing Dr. Allen's role as a prominent early Dallas physician, Grace Allen's association with and leadership in social and literary circles in Dallas, and the couple's connection with the development of the near north side and Oak Lawn section of the city.

History

Dallas in the mid- to late-1880s was a prosperous rail hub, with the Houston & Texas Central and Texas & Pacific Railways, along with the Missouri, Kansas & Texas and several other railroads, converging on the booming town on the banks of the Trinity River. Land development and speculation, in Dallas always an economic pastime and often a leisure pursuit as well, was at an all-time record level. Between 1880 and 1890, Dallas' population had nearly tripled and assessed taxable valuation of real estate had grown by 800 per cent. Suburban expansion to the south in the fashionable Cedars area, to the northeast along the newly opened Ross Avenue corridor, and across the river to the southwest in the adjoining town of Oak Cliff saw rapid construction of homes and businesses in entire new additions or plats. The growing population brought near gridlock to the alternately dusty and muddy streets of Dallas, and "rapid transit" lines Š horse drawn, electric or steam locomotive driven Š were created both to relieve congestion and to facilitate sales of homesites in the new areas on the outskirts of the city.

Suburban development to the north of the city's heart was slower to occur than to the south and east, however, thanks in part to the physical and psychological barrier of the Texas & Pacific railroad mainline tracks along Pacific Avenue. The railroad grade, raised several feet above the surrounding streets, had become a dangerous and annoying irritant to citizens and an impediment to the speculators wishing to attract homebuyers to the valuable lands across the tracks to the north. Nevertheless, in 1884 the Belt Street Railway was extended by a group of investors to convey prospective homebuyers north of the tracks, beyond the "Frogtown" red-light district on lowest McKinney, to the newly opened Thomas and Colby (Streets) area, North Dallas' first socially elite neighborhood. A fragment of the neighborhood, with more modest houses than the elegant mansions that would spring up on nearby Ross and Maple Avenues within a few years, remains in the State Thomas Historic District (NR, City of Dallas) in 1998.

Another major factor contributing to a sudden boom in North Dallas development arose, meanwhile, as a result of the conflict between rival factions of Dallas State Fair organizers. The fight had culminated in 1886 with competing fairs operating across town from one another. When the faction supporting the one-year-old Texas State Fair (located on what is now the grounds of North Dallas High School and Cole Park) capitulated to Col. William H. Gaston and his preferred East Dallas site, developer Frank Cockrell acquired the North Dallas fairgrounds and laid out the Fairland Addition to promote for housing development. Cockrell, with investors Walter Caruth, O. P. Bowser, Jules Schneider and Royal Ferris, chartered the North Dallas Circuit Railway in 1887 and began steam-driven rail service in a loop that passed just north of the Thomas-Cole addition, beyond Trinity (now Greenwood), Emanu-El, and Calvary Cemeteries and the nearby Freedman's Town and Cemetery, to Fairland. Ultimately, Cockrell's speculative real estate venture didnÕt succeed and few homes would be built for another 20 years. However, his Circuit Railway did serve to encourage more rapid development closer to town, including in John M. Howell's Fairmount area, where Richard and Grace Allen were soon to build their gracious Queen Anne mansion one block south of the Circuit Railway line.

J.M. Howell had settled on a sizeable tract between the Cedar Springs and McKinney Roads in 1872, planting vineyards and orchards and opening a commercial greenhouse at McKinney and Pearl . After attending the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, the "father of Dallas horticulture" returned home and began planning an addition to the city on his own land that would reflect the graciousness and beauty he had seen in Philadelphia. Streets were named for his father-in-law (Rev. Jacob Routh), his own family, and after Fairmount Park, the site of the Philadelphia Exposition. Remaining largely a "tangled growth of wisteria and honeysuckle" until 1888, in that year fellow real estate promoter Edwin P. Cowan built his spectacular Queen Anne-style mansion "The Shingles" on the western edge of HowellÕs addition, at the northwest corner of Cedar Springs Road and Maple Avenue.

Howell, Cowan, Cockrell and several other real estate venturers embarked on an ambitious effort to promote nearly all of North Dallas as a "healthful, cooler" and less muddy alternative to living closer to the city. The North Dallas Improvement Company was formed as a loose association of investors and developers, and included Oliver P. Bowser and W.H. Lemmon, who soon opened BowserÕs & Lemmon's Addition north of Turtle Creek, and Oliver Thomas, HowellÕs former partner in the nursery and developer of the Thomas-Colby area. Cowan focused his speculative attention on the Maple Avenue corridor, selling a tract of more than 250 acres to the City of Dallas in 1889 that would serve first as a "pleasure and driving park," and in 1894 as the site for Parkland Hospital at Maple and Oak Lawn Avenues. Quickly, Maple Avenue and the North Dallas development would rival Ross Avenue at the architectural and social apex of Dallas domestic life. The North Dallas Improvement Company Addition - Maple to Routh Streets, north from McKinney past Cedar Springs Road -- was platted on March 18, 1889. That same year, William H. Thomas, President of the American National Bank, was living on McKinney between Harwood and Maple, while C.S. Woodworth, wealthy from lumber interests in East Texas, built a massive home at Maple and Cedar Springs. Exuberant villas such as a respectable brick mansion for M.D. Garlington, Thomas Marsalis' partner in the wholesale grocery business (1889); and George Dilley's extravagantly eclectic Moorish "Ivy Hall" (1890) also rose along Maple Avenue.

On August 27, 1889, Richard and Grace Allen purchased their 150 by 150-foot property at the southwest corner of Fairmount and Mahon Streets from John M. Wharton for $4,681.25. Wharton had bought the three lots from the North Dallas Improvement Company in May. The Allens would immediately begin construction of a large and gracious home in an image befitting the emerging upper class neighborhood around them, and their evident station in Dallas society.

Richard Wisdom Allen was born near Lexington, Kentucky on November 23, 1846, received a medical degree from Transylvania University in Lexington in 1870 and completed graduate medical studies at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York in 1872. Allen joined Dr. Jacob A. Ewing in his practice in Dallas in 1873, and for the next forty years practiced surgery and general medicine with offices in prestigious office buildings in downtown Dallas. In 1880, Allen was appointed to serve on the Dallas Board of Health, and was listed as the "local physician" for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Railroad from 1881 to 1912. Active in the Dallas County and Texas State Medical Societies, Dr. Allen served on various Society committees including Ethics and Membership during his lengthy career.

Dr. Allen married Grace Simpson and the couple had several children: a daughter, Nellie, who was born in 1876, and two sons who died in infancy. Grace was born in 1849 New York, but little is known about her background or early life, and a date of marriage has not been found. The Allens lived for a number of years at 1125 Main Street between St. Paul and Harwood Streets, then a respectable neighborhood of neat single family residences near downtown and some three blocks from the Central Christian Church where they worshipped. Grace's mother, Jane Simpson, and younger brother, William, were living with the Allens and their servant in 1880.

No record can be found of an architect or building permit for the spacious house on Fairmount Street, but neighborhood lore suggests that William Simpson, who was listed in City Directories as a contractor, had a hand in the house's construction. Their friend and business associate William B. Gano had just completed a large, frame Queen Anne house designed by Dallas architects George W. Stewart and Brock C. Fuller at the northeast corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, and its published image in the Dallas Herald in October 1889 bears a striking resemblance to Richard and Grace Allen's. Perhaps, the Allens may have engaged Stewart and Fuller as well. The family was listed in the 1890 - 1891 City Directory at home at 445 Fairmount (the address to be changed to 2603 during the citywide renumbering process in 1910). William Simpson lived at the same address. There the Allens remained until 1912.

Construction of the house was probably not complete when Richard Allen embarked on his only known effort to ride the wave of real estate-driven prosperity in Dallas. He and his friend William Gano joined with several partners in another speculative North Dallas real estate venture that ultimately failed. In the fall of 1890, an article appeared in the Dallas newspapers touting the impending opening of the Southern Female University, "a school for young ladies under the auspices of the Christian Church." Planned to serve the "higher and highest grades" to prepare young women "to adorn homes and professions," the University was also touted as another opportunity to promote the "pride and progress of the cityÉ. Every dollar brought to the city by schools is that much outside capital placed in circulation here." Obviously, founding of educational institutions was regarded as a legitimate economic development tool!

The location was part of the "Philadelphia Place" lands that Col. Henry Exall had acquired from the historic Cole farm and represented to a group of Philadelphia investors. The ten-acre University campus was laid out just west of the then-under-construction Exall Lake, in what is now the Town of Highland Park, with an additional fifteen acres set apart for "a permanent fund." That fifteen acres was advertised the following week as the University Place Addition, another wonderful - and perhaps educational Š place to buy or build a home near the school. Dr. Richard W. Allen was named as President of the University Place Improvement Company and William B. Gano as Vice-President. The two friends also served on the board of governors of the Southern Female University, along with Maj. K.M. Van Zandt, Capt. W. H. Lemmon and Judge James B. Goff of Austin. Gano's father, Civil War hero Gen. Richard M. Gano, served as President. As with so many high-flown dreams of the early 1890s, the real estate development never materialized, the red brick and tan Pecos stone Richardsonian Romanesque-style Administration building and dormitories were never built, and the school never opened. (continues on next page, click more).