50 |ARTS & CRAFTS HOMES Winter 2017
“W
ESAW NOTHING REDEEMING in the house what-
soever,” the owners aver. Boarded up and
foreclosed, it was truly the worst house in
a sociable and attractive neighborhood in
the Oak Cliff area of Dallas. “There was no ‘architecture’, other
than such small details as the exposed rafter tails and cruciform
openings in the front porch’s brick wall.” Otherwise, it was a
very generic 1949 ranch with smallish rooms, a terrible fl oor
plan, 8' ceilings, and no relationship to the backyard.
Still, the interesting, oversized lot looked toward wood-
land. That sort of lot is rare in Dallas. So Chas Fitzgerald and
Jackson Hammack bought the house to remake it. Today’s
kitchen, interior board walls, fi replace and entry tile, and the
front door are new, not to mention the beautiful garden areas.
The property has an Arts & Crafts feeling, designed in an eclec-
tic combination of Western motifs with a Modern twist. The
tiled fi replace centers the home, as it does in so many bunga-
lows; yet the clean, unornamented lines befi t a 1940s house.
Re-issues of Stickley and Hickory furniture mingle with mod-
ern classics and leather. It’s all very personal.
The owners took care to echo what original assets the
house did have. Grouped windows in the corners were repeat-
ed in new spaces. The rafter tails were given emphasis. The
cross motif in the brick wall was picked up in the design for
embossed tiles around the entry door and in the fi replace sur-
round. The brick façade is original, albeit with new windows
custom-made to reproduce the horizontal pattern in the origi-
nal steel windows. Original hardwoods remain. In a bathroom
with vintage blue tiles, cabinets were simply refaced.BEFORE