Miscellany seen around town:
(F)armed and dangerous: The barb-wired security fence around this garden keeps more than the taters and ’maters from going walkabout. The garden is tended by inmates at the county jail facility on Cold Springs Road. The 1883 driving park was located near this facility.
Wizard of ooze: The mason who built the brick wall of this 1921 gas station on Nashville Avenue might appear to have been pretty sloppy. But I suspect that the wall was erected against an existing wall and that this side of the new wall was exposed to view only after the adjoining building was demolished decades later.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to get their maximum allowable deductions.” All together now, repeat after me: “I love my job. I love my job. I could have a job where I stand in the middle of traffic on East Belknap wearing a polyester toga and a foam-rubber diadem.”
The hemi-house: This house on Oakland Boulevard has long piqued the curiosity of passersby. It looks as if someone sawed it in half widthwise. Real estate websites say it somehow has two bedrooms.
The deed card says the house is 344 square feet—about half the size of a shotgun house.
The little building was built in 1928 as a real estate office for W. F. White’s land company as White, who also owned White Lake Dairy to the north, developed the Scenery Hill addition. These White Lake Dairy ads, from 1917 and 1921, locate the dairy a mile north of the Oakland interurban stop and congratulate the Texas Hotel on its opening.
From the 1928 city directory. The address of the hemi-house is 1840 Oakland Boulevard.
Today the little house really is the Little house: It is owned by Robert and Margie Little.
As I’ve worked my way through the blog posts, photos have often stopped me short- many places I had almost forgotten about. But the little house on Oakland is a special case. We called it “The Doghouse”. In your picture it looks quite respectable, but in the 1960s it was rented by several young men- college students, going to Texas Wesleyan. It was a party house of a standing I had never encountered before, nor ever since. The place probably had to be stripped to the studs to make it habitable.
According to the people who owned the place back then, it was built as a real estate office when the area residences were going up; I assumed the ‘forties. But- the style is Tudor, a mostly ‘twenties phenomenon, so who knows.
Nancy Brownlee
Nancy, thanks for inspiring me to add some background on the hemi-house.
I just can’t believe I was right about the era of construction- maybe my brain isn’t slipping as badly as I thought.
Glad you triggered further research. Explains why the house is so unhouselike. The old White Lake Dairy silo still stands just off the turnpike at Oakland. There is a photo elsewhere on this blog.