Henry S. Miller is Selling His Flawless Cy Barcus Built Man Cave. And I Want It!

Years ago I wrote about this home when I was at D Home, and the way home builder Cy Barcus built a 3800 square foot palace in 2004 utilizing the best of everything he knew from his 35 year plus building career. I recall thinking, God, this would be the perfect home for us in a few years.

Cy sold it four years ago to Henry S. Miller. Now it’s hit the market for $3,500,000.

Cy even split the lot between him and the neighbor next door — at that time it was Margaret Ryder, still is, I think. The two could not have had more opposite homes — his a clean contemporary designed by Richard Drummond Davis, her’s a rustic Dilbeck cottage with English gardens. But split they did, and the land soon became the testament of a great friendship. Even their dogs made themselves at home in each other’s homes, passing through a little opening in a stone fence down the middle of the split lot. I am guessing that arrangement still exists because the lot is 90 feet wide — huge for this neck of the PC.

Also, at the time, like I said, it was 2004. Shenandoah was not known for screaming contemporary architecture. Almost a dozen years later, there are contemporaries all over the Park Cities, even a “box” on Mockingbird.

Cy Barcus was known for years as a builder of mansions for the city’s rich and famous. We can take a look at our CandysDirt-approved homebuilders page and see who has taken his place now. Still, when he built 4208 Shenandoah, he tried very hard to fit the shape and form of the house  into the traditional neighborhood.

Richard Davis called it a “saltbox — incredibly indigenous to Texas.”

The materials included cut Leuders limestone, and flat clay tile for the roof, which coordinated with the Dilbeck next door. Dormers were covered in Corten steel, which he told me were supposed to rust on the exterior, the rust providing not just a layer of protective coating but an artistic touch on the exterior stucco walls: that stain.

This is a man’s house, with a man’s no-frills sensibilites. No frills, curlicues, or froufrou “She Sheds”.  (I would change that in a hurry!) He stuck to clean lines, no drapes (ever! I agree!) and sensibly sizing.

“Some of these houses (in Dallas) are so damn big, you have to think of names for the rooms,” he told me at the time. Yeah, and he built them!

It was Cy Barcus who taught me that a contemporary home is harder to construct than a traditional. Moldings hide imperfections or uneven corners. Without them, you have to have superiors craftsmen who know what they are doing. Glossy plaster walls require perfect tape-bed-texture skills, not to mention hours of pre- and post sanding, and layers of paint.

The home has two living areas, four bedrooms, four full and one half baths. The garage/artist studio was so clean and beautiful when I saw the house, Barcus had some of his art collection hanging there. The clear doors make it another room in the house, and it may well be air conditioned. Large doors in the family room open to the exterior patio and create an outside room perfect for entertaining.

Again, he was ahead of his time: everyone wants one of these now, preferably with auto screens.

The kitchen had a stainless steel kitchen island, Kuppersbusch glass ceramic cooktop, oiled oak flooring with oak woodwork and cabinets before the whole world did. The French limestone floors in the master bath are touched with hard-coat plaster walls smooth as a baby’s bottom. I think there is even a dog bath in the master because Cy loves dogs so much, and always has at least one.

In the family room is a Rumford fireplace, which Cy knew he wanted after he put one in a Frank Welch designed home. Those are the tall, architecturally interesting fireplaces that lose less heat than traditional ones; I think the wood stacks vertically. Other things he snitched from great Dallas architects: the family room’s hip ceiling paneled with long grain fir beams, a Bud Oglesby design inspiration, and those glass doors on the garage/art studio. Idea came came from a home he built on Lexington Avenue.

So yeah, you are getting a home with the magical design touches of every top architect in Dallas, built by the master builder himself to live in. I cannot imagine how long anything would have stayed broken or unrepaired in this house– about five seconds. I always knew Cy was a building perfectionist. Whoever gets this home is one lucky buyer. Listed with Rogers Healy & Associates on June 24.