The Preservationist

Catherine (“Cay”) and Nathaniel (“Key”) Kolb moved into the house at 4402 Rawlins in 1964 and in it raised three boys and three girls. They had met in Dallas in 1958 while Cay, who had just graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, was working as a buyer for Sanger-Harris and Key had just graduated …

The House with the Best Plumbing

Why does this house have two huge master bedrooms on each side of the home? This was quite unusual in the twenties when it was built. Clarence L Dickerson and his closest friend, Ward Downs went into business together in 1918 after Clarence had the opportunity to buy the plumbing business he had been working …

The Movie Star’s Family

The blue-tile roofed home at 4433 Rawlins St. was designed by Sadler & Russell, architects and constructed by H. F. Self and Son, contractors, for owner Jack P. Burrus. To the new owners, the Maloney’s, it was a larger home than the one at 4332 Livingston where, until the late 1940’s, they raised their family. …

The Artist of Perry Heights

Rosealie Speed was an early Texas artist, painting professionally since 1929, who has one painting in the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art. She has had exhibitions in the museums of San Francisco, Kansas City, Panhandle Plains, and Tyler, Texas. Her favorite subjects were landscapes and flowers and favoring oil and watercolors. She …

The Perry Heights Power Couple

Arch and Patsy Swank moved into this large craftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home at 4316 Rawlins with over 6,000 square feet built in 1944 with a huge front porch to accommodate their family of four children in the Spring of 1958.  They were a Perry Heights super couple. Both were known to be smart, cultured, …

Perry Height’s Last Known Debutante

In 1936, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Irwin Payne hired architect, Ralph Bryan, to design their home at 4524 Rawlins Street in the style of a Louisiana plantation home.  They toured several Louisiana plantation homes to collect what Mr. Payne wanted in his own home. The site was at the corner of Rawlins and Hawthorne, right …