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Park Cities group seeks to preserve historic Elbert Williams House

The 1932 home is up for sale, and it has no landmark protection.

It is not the oldest, it is not the biggest, and it is certainly not the flashiest, but there’s a good argument that the Elbert Williams House is the most important work of residential architecture in Texas. At least, there aren’t any that are more important.

Designed in 1932 by David R. Williams (who was of no relation to his client), the house on McFarlin Boulevard in University Park broke with the fashion of the times, in which a respectable house was dressed in a respectable architectural style: Georgian, Renaissance, Plantation, what have you.

The Williams House was respectable, sure, but it was also something unique, a house that borrowed on the traditions of Texas vernacular design. It has been an inspiration for generations of Texas architects practicing a regionally driven modernism, among them O’Neil Ford, Frank Welch and the firm Lake Flato.

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Its future as a touchstone is in doubt, however, as it is up for sale, and it is not safeguarded by landmark protection.

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In an effort to build support for the house, the Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society has published a small book, A House for Texas ($30), documenting its history, with text by architect Larry Good and photographs by Charles Davis Smith. A virtual event with Good and Smith will take place on Nov. 5 at 6 p.m.

Details

Call 214-528-0021 or visit pcphs.org.