From Staff Reports
On Thursday, Nov. 15, members of the Dallas Pacesetters – a select group of 30 Dallas-area Realtors from various brokerages – gathered over boxed lunches at 3504 Marquette Street in University Park to listen to nationally acclaimed local architect, Richard Drummond Davis. Davis, who trained at Princeton University under renowned post-modernist Michael Graves, spoke on “Trends and Residential Design.” Though he has a reputation for authentic period architecture, his early career focused on eclectic designs, blending classical forms with contemporary use of space.
Richard Drummond Davis
One such example of an eclectic Davis project was, not coincidentally, the meeting site on Marquette, which is also a current listing of Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate agents and Pacesetters, Paige and Curt Elliott. Davis explained the thought process behind the 1984 home’s 5,184-square-foot “meandering” floor plan. Conversations can be had across multiple rooms, including from the lofted game room down to the main living/dining space.
“We consciously tried to make it flow from room to room,” said Davis. “The open plan was intended to be that way. Back then, everyone in Dallas was still doing discrete rooms in houses and pretty much doing only American Colonial architecture, classical Georgian and Greek Revival architecture.”
In that respect, the four-bedroom, five-bath home somewhat defied the norms of the time.
Now that Amy and Jim “Sevy” Severson’s children have left the nest, the two have set their sights on a Gulf Coast vacation home and a smaller abode in Dallas. That decision is going to mean great things for a new family, since they’ve listed the North Dallas home they built in 2001.
It can be a gamble, buying an older home. Sometimes they’ve been updated and the price reflects that, and other times they are in desperate need of love. Neither is the case with this week’s Inwood Home of the Week, a 1950s Mediterranean in West Highland Park with curb appeal for days and bright, airy finishes throughout the interior.
