On the Home Tour by Evelyn Montgomery
This month we meet the owner of a special home tour house, one that is not a home but a place of business. Lisa McKnight and her law partner Keith Becker have transformed a house on Gaston into a comfortable and welcoming office for their family law clients. The lawyers had been searching the city for an old house to
serve that purpose when they lost a bid to buy the blue house on the corner of Columbia and Munger. Fate lead them to Gaston Avenue. Not only was that stretch of Gaston one of the few places in East Dallas where residential homes had been approved for commercial use, the house fit exactly what they wanted it to do. It
already had big rooms where they could hold client meetings. And although the upstairs had been cut up into individual rooms decades earlier, it worked well for attorney offices. The upstairs rooms are small, but filled with light, and an amazing amount of paperwork.
The Neo-Classical house with a prominent porch was originally built in 1909 and was owned by a man specializing in fabricating metal tiles. That may explain the intricate metal work underneath the eaves of the house. The house morphed into a boarding house, probably during the Depression or World War II, which would explain the reconfiguration upstairs. The Lisa and Keith have not altered any of the existing structure of the house, instead focusing on painting, structural and plumbing repair etc. “We pay all upgrades in cash and are taking our time; our plan is to upgrade the kitchen and baths and reconfigure the upstairs, ”said Lisa. They have decorated the interior with cheerful colors and white surfaces, and several architectural fragments
like columns. It is exciting to include an office like this on the home tour. Many historic districts are like ours in that they include a wide, busy street with extra traffic and often with larger homes. Between the size of the houses, the frequency with which they were made into multi-family housing and the noisy cars going by, they may not be very attractive as residences. Professional offices for lawyers, doctors, real estate agents and accountants often find that these houses suit their needs. The offices help the neighborhood as well. They stabilize the neighborhood and give it a good image. The business owners have every reason to maintain their properties
so that they are clean and attractive. We could do a lot worse than to have more professionals like Lisa and Keith take over the houses on Gaston Avenue for offices. Perhaps a visitor to our home tour will be inspired by how well this house serves its new purpose, and want to join us here in Peak’s Addition.
4711 Gaston, 214.720.0585
