Homes full of HISTORY The houses on this year’s home tour have stories to tell

Story by Rachel Stone Photos by Can Türkyilmaz

Every year, the Lakewood Home Festival showcases some of the most beautiful and interesting houses in our neighborhood. This year’s tour of six homes is Nov. 12-13. Tickets are $17 in advance or $20 on the days of the tour, and they’re available at Dallas Tom Thumb stores and online at lecpta.org. Proceeds benefit Lakewood Elementary School.

We interviewed the owners of two tour houses. One is a 1936 Bauhaus built for the Texas Centennial celebration; the other is a grand Tudor revival on Westlake that originally belonged to Neiman Marcus founder Herbert Marcus.

DON’T CALL IT ART DECO

Dan Noble has one request before the interview begins: “Could you not call it art deco?”

It’s a common mistake. Ann and Dan Noble’s home o Gaston Avenue is boxy and modern, with orderly lines. Those without knowledge of architecture tend to mischaracterize it. But it doesn’t have the excessive decorative elements that define Art Deco.

No, this house is Bauhaus. It’s one of seven homes built in the Bauhaus style for the city’s Texas Centennial celebration in 1936. Another of the seven is a twostory white brick home on Gaston, near the Lakewood golf course.

More than a style, Bauhaus is school of thought founded in Germany around 1919.

“It was a response to all the nationalism that was prevalent before World War II,” Noble says. “It’s not German. It’s not Danish. It’s not Dutch. It’s international. It can work anywhere, and it was cutting-edge in 1936.” continued on page 56

The Nobles are from the Dakotas, and they met in architecture school in Fargo. They moved to Texas in the early ’80s, and after they married, they bought and updated a house in the Hollywood/Santa Monica neighborhood.

After they started a family, they bought another house down the street from their current house and started on a 10-year plan to renovate it. But they loved the Bauhaus place, which originally was designed by Luther Sadler, and they asked its owner whether he would ever sell it.

”It was a response to all the nationalism that was prevalent before World War II. It’s not German. It’s not Danish. It’s not Dutch. It’s international. It can work anywhere, and it was cuttingedge in 1936.

At first he told them he intended to die in the house. But later, his plans changed, and he offered to sell it. The Nobles weren’t ready — they were three years into their 10year plan.

They invited two architecture friends to look at the house, and they both said they didn’t think it was worth the money and effort to renovate.

But the Nobles loved the house. So in 2000, they bought it and began a threeyear renovation that involved adding about 1,200 square feet to the back of the house, including a family room, a master suite and a staircase. They also put in a new kitchen, renovated a second-story bath and installed a swimming pool that looks like it has been there all along.

While they were renovating, they lived for three years in two upstairs rooms with their kids, who were about 5 and 7 at the time. They had one bathroom and a fridge in the ground-floor living room.

“It was kind of fun,” Dan Noble says, in hindsight.

The Nobles also are art collectors, but one of their favorite pieces is one Ann Noble created. It’s her father’s collection of political buttons, which she put together into a frame now centered on the 10-seat dining room table.

Abrams