A Loving Tribute Unfolds in Stevens Park Village

This is a different kind of love story. It’s not only about the love of a home but also about a mother’s love. John Romero bought this charming 1941 Austin stone cottage in the Stevens Park Village neighborhood over 20 years ago. Like most of us, he had plans to fix up his home, but also, like most of us, those plans kept getting put on the back burner.  

“He decided to buy a house here because my parents lived in the neighborhood for years, and he loved it,” Romero’s mother, Lilia Hernandez, said. “He also loved how I’d fixed up my house and would always tell me he wanted  my help when he got ready to do his.” 

Then Romero suddenly passed away, so fixing up his home became a mother’s loving tribute to her son. 

It’s one thing to remodel and restore a historic home; it’s another to do it out of love. You know that every single thing that has been touched was done as a tribute. That sort of care cannot be matched.

“I had him in mind every step of the way,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez and her husband Louis got to work on the stone cottage, replacing the roof, installing new HVAC, and enclosing a porch to create a great laundry and mud room. They did it all, including replacing the sheetrock.

“We added new appliances, replaced everything in the kitchen, restored the kitchen cabinets, and updated the bathrooms,” Hernandez said.

The 1,543-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom cottage still has the original steel casement windows. “They are fully operational and flood the home with natural light,” Dave Perry-Miller Realtor Diane Sherman of Sherman & Sherman said. 

There are original hardwoods, the formals still have the beautiful crown and picture molding, and the dining room has the original quaint built-in corner cabinets.

“I think John would have loved it all,” Hernandez said. 

Stevens Park Village is a rare neighborhood because it has a large number of well-crafted, intimate, and intact Austin stone and brick cottages on winding, leafy streets. That has attracted some notable preservationists, including David Preziosi, the former executive director of Preservation Dallas and the current president and CEO for the Texas Historical Foundation, and Donovan Westover, the former events and development director at Preservation Dallas.

“The neighborhood has a unique character,” Preziosi said. “I bought my home because the original character was still intact. I looked in other places and kept coming back here because it was so different from other neighborhoods in Dallas. All the houses work together, the trees are amazing and we have proximity to everything.”

Oddly enough, Preziosi happened to purchase Romero’s grandparents’ former home.  

Preziosi and Westover are deeply involved in the neighborhood effort to become a conservation district.

“Stevens Park Village is on course to become Dallas’ newest conservation district, with several other Oak Cliff neighborhoods in line behind us,” Westover said. “This home is an exemplary example of why we need to protect our neighborhood, and our community looks forward to the next 83 years of stories that 2302 Lawndale Drive has to tell.”

Sherman has 2302 Lawndale Dr. listed for $489,400.  You’ll feel the love the moment you walk through the front door. An open house is set for 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18.