CandysDirt.com Readers to the Rescue: Digging up The Dirt on Villa Vista!

Candysdirt.com readers are the best! Last week I asked for help solving a couple of mysteries surrounding Villa Vista, a beautiful Tudor Revival on Rio Vista in East Kessler Park. Boy, did y’all come through!

DCAD was offering a build date I knew was wrong, but I had to prove it. Finding the architect’s name proved challenging with my deadline. After poring through the Dallas Public Library’s Dallas Morning News archives, using the keywords I thought would be successful, I put it out to our readers.

The keywords were Evergreen Hills. I should have made the leap because the name is still used, and after all, there is an Evergreen Hills Road that practically runs into Rio Vista.

The first reader to respond was Scott Chase, who is friends with architectural historian and Oak Cliff resident Jim Barnes. Jim snapped to the fact it was Evergreen Hills and provided this great aerial reference. The house is No. 14. He also had some interesting ideas, and perhaps the Dallas County clerk might read this and discover a few more insights to send our way!

The Dallas County Deed records would possibly include a mortgage note from when Charles R. Moore built the house — $100,000 was a lot to spend on a house in 1923, and I would guess that there were some sort of mortgage documents filed with the County. That would give a date of when construction was financed — and probably commenced shortly thereafter.

A second thought is that George E. Kessler was hired to lay out parkways along Coombes Creek and a Boulevard through the hills of the area in 1921 — paid by a private stakeholder group from the area. Kessler’s original parkway proposal had new roadways running along both sides of the creek from Beckley to Davis. But the Kessler Memorial Parkway actually built avoids the Rio Vista property of Charles R. Moore— originating from Greenbriar rather than Beckley. I wonder if Moore already owned the land in 1921 and decided that he didn’t want the parkway obstructing his views down to the creek. (In those days, there was no zoning or rights of eminent domain — everything was built by consent of the various individual landowners).

A few hours later, Alberto Garza, who has the wonderful Instagram page Sidewalks of Dallas, reached out with his findings, which included a Dallas Morning News article that had eluded me again because of the keyword.

“This home is now under construction for Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Moore, one and one-half miles west of the Dallas County Courthouse and just north of Evergreen Hills in Oak Cliff. Coombs Creek forms the northern boundary of the 31.5 acres of property on which the home sits. The property is covered with every species of native Texas trees, affording opportunity for unusually effective landscaping which has been done by Koch & Fowler, Dallas engineers. A beautiful view of the Dallas Skyline is afforded from the home. A spring-fed lake on the property will be improved with a private bathing pavilion. The home was designed by Bertram C. Hill and is being built by J.J. Churchill contractor.

Dallas Morning News

In another article from Dec. 12, 1926, with the headline “Combines City and Farm Life,” Villa Vista was described as the “city farm” of Charles. R. Moore and called Rio Vista. My favorite part of the story is their description of the home being within the rifle shot of the courthouse. In 1926, the estate had a lake stocked with multiple species of fish, and the grounds had thousands of native trees, 47 varieties of ornamental shrubs, and six ornamental trees.

Sounds like heaven, and fortunately, this little slice of heaven is still for sale.

Realtor Jason Saucedo of the Hewitt + Saucedo Realty Group with Dave Perry-Miller In-Town has Villa Vista at 1707 Rio Vista Dr. listed for $3.65 million.

Huge thanks to our readers who really dug up the dirt for us!