LEGEND G R E E N W O O D
K I N G
P R O P E R T I E S
Front door and glass transom with wishbone tracery
Legend: The City of Houston Protected Landmark residence at 4019 Inverness, “Legend,” the Mrs. Knox B. Howe House, is a metaphor for a Houston that has mostly vanished. Completed at the end of the Eisenhower administration in 1959, its intertwined architectural and ancestral provenance begins much earlier in the first quarter of the 20th century in Houston and travels backwards in time to the heady days of the Republic of Texas.
Foyer
All in the Family Legend was designed by and for legendary Houstonians of the Howe-Briscoe family. Its architect, Birdsall Parmenas Briscoe, FAIA, was one of Houston’s foremost architects before and between the wars and played an influential role in the city’s civic and social affairs until his death in 1962. Born in 1876, Briscoe was Texas royalty; he was the grandson of Andrew Briscoe, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and a hero of the decisive Battle of San Jacinto, and the great-grandson of John Richardson Harris for whom Harrisburg and Harris County are named. An architect of exceptional skill and refinement, Briscoe designed the first house built in River Oaks, a “summer house” on Inwood Drive for the Will Clayton family that remains in the family today. He collaborated with John Staub on the design of Bayou Bend for Ima, Will, and Mike Hogg, the developers of River Oaks and Tall Timbers. During the Great Depression, Briscoe was South Texas District Officer of the American Buildings Survey and directed the documentation of 82 historic sites in east, southeast, and central Texas. At his induction ceremony as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1949, he was lauded for the “good taste, elegance, and suitability for locale” of his houses. Legend was
Howe family crest above front door
Briscoe’s last commission before his retirement. Legend’s original owner, Dorothy Virginia Trone Howe, later Mrs. Edmund McAshan Dupree, was the widow of Knox Briscoe Howe, Briscoe’s cousin who shared his Briscoe-Harris lineage. The architectural historian Stephen Fox wrote in the City of Houston Landmark Designation Report that “[the home] possesses character, interest, and value as a visible reminder of the development, heritage, and cultural legacy of mid-twentieth-century Houston. It was designed and built as a private monument to the distinguished Texan family heritage of [Knox Howe]…” Dorothy descended from a ranching family in Fort Bend County famous for raising champion Santa Gertrudis cattle and fine horses. After a Houston childhood, she graduated from MacMurrey College for Women in Jacksonville, Illinois in 1932 where she was a member of Belles Lettres, reputedly the first women’s college literary society in the United States. Dorothy wrote the society column for the Houston Post until her marriage to Knox Howe in 1941. A horsewoman of note who bred champion Saddlebred horses, Dorothy and her horse Blue Beau Starr won the Houston Pin Oak Charity Horseshow Ladies Fine Harness Division championship for three consecutive years and in 1988 won reserve world’s championship (second place) in the World’s Championship Horse Show Ladies and Amateur Fine Harness Division in Louisville, Kentucky.
Reception hall
Dorothy’s commitments included the Houston Symphony, The Alliance of Pan American Roundtables, Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Texas and Southwest Cattle Raisers Association, Friends of Mount Vernon, Fort Bend Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Friends of the Houston Public Library, and the First Presbyterian Church of Houston. The late Dorothy Knox Howe Houghton and her brother Harris Milton Howe lived at Legend through their adolescent years. Dorothy Knox and her late husband Thomas Woodward Houghton moved in to the house in 1985 and raised their family there until Dorothy Knox’s death in 2018. Dorothy Knox was a fierce advocate for historic preservation within Houston and co-authored the book, Houston’s Forgotten Heritage: Landscape, Houses, Interiors, 1824-1914, Texas A & M University Press, 1991. The expansive archives that she and her co-authors assembled are now housed at the Houston Public Library in the Houston Metropolitan Research Center (HMRC). Dorothy Knox also authored The Houston Club and Its City: One Hundred Years, published by The Houston Club, 1994. Dorothy Knox was pivotal in the creation of Friends of the Texas Room, the organization formed to support the HMRC and the 1926 Julia Ideson Building, Houston’s original public library. A cofounder and lifelong president of FTxR, she played an important role in ensuring the restoration of the Ideson Building. As president of the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in Texas (NSCDA-TX), she spearheaded a major restoration of the Neill-Cochran House Museum in Austin. Additional memberships included the Texas Arts Alliance, The Junior League of Houston, Houston Ballet Guild, Rice Design Alliance, River Oaks Blossom Club, The Forest Club, The Houston Club, Houston Assembly, The English Speaking Union, the Sulgrave Club (Washington, D.C.), San Jacinto Museum of History, National Cathedral Association, Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and Daughters of the American Revolution. The House Briscoe was instrumental in establishing the country house type as the preferred elite house type in Houston. Legend was built in Tall Timbers, originally purposed as the country estate section of River Oaks with large, sometimes multi-acre, homesites. As late as the 1940s, advertising brochures depicted Tall Timbers as rustic equestrian country where residents kept horses for recreation. That bucolic character has softened with time but Legend’s thick screen of woodland continues to shield the house from view, perpetuating an air of glamour and mystery. In the City of Houston Landmark Designation report, Fox writes that Legend “exemplifies the twentiethcentury Southern Colonial architectural style and country house building type.” He further describes the house as a “monumentalized version of the house that John R. Harris’s widow and her sons built in Harrisburg in 1836 to replace John R. Harris’s house, which the army of General Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna burned in April 1836 during the Runaway Scrape.” Birdsall Briscoe was born in that replacement house, known as the Harris House, in Harrisburg forty years after its completion. At Legend, towering colonnades of square wooden columns surround the house on three sides and support the front portico, where the massive front door is surmounted by a glass transom with “wishbone” tracery. Inside, ceilings soar to nearly 11 feet and the 14-foot wide reception hall travels from the front door past enormous formal rooms to the library, formal powder room, main staircase, glass door to the terrace, breakfast room and return staircase, and kitchen. Briscoe was famous for refined details, especially millwork and wrought iron accents, most of which he designed himself. At Legend, in homage to the family’s heritage, Dorothy Howe Dupree designed selected motifs for the millwork such as the Palmetto frond crest carved above the front entrance; the Texas stars incised above the library door and within the shell bonnet of the dining room cupboard; the bas-relief pineapples recessed into the library paneling; and the Egyptian-inspired papyri capitals of the pilasters in the reception hall. That combined focus on detail is fully displayed throughout rooms enhanced with elaborately-patterned hardware floors; delicate paneling and deep picture molding; paneled Pullman and pocket doors equipped with heavy brass hardware; recessed floor-to-ceiling treble-sash windows; and elegantly carved fireplace mantels.
The Texas star with oak leaf wreath designed by Dortothy Howe Dupree
Pineapple urn designed by Dortothy Howe Dupree
Living room
The expansive living and dining rooms, open to each other across the reception hall, project inviting grace and intimacy thanks to Briscoe’s deft hand at proportion. The living room, a double salon with a chevron-pattern hardwood floor, overlooks the front porch and side gardens through full-length windows, two of which flank the fireplace, and adjoins the library through paneled pocket doors. The dining room also overlooks the front porch and features a herringbone-pattern hardwood floor, delicate wainscot, a Newport-style cupboard with a Texas star in the superbly carved shell, a fireplace, and a pivot door adjoining the kitchen. At the far end of the reception hall near the grand serpentine staircase, the impressive library, paneled in pecan wood, has a magnificent fireplace faced with the flame-colored Numidian marble used in the
View from living room into dining room
Living room
Dining room
construction of Rockefeller Center in New York. Bookcases flank and overmount the fireplace; fixed single-pane floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the rear stone terrace and gardens; bas-relief millwork features pineapples, a symbol of wealth and hospitality, and an oak-leaf wreath surrounding a Texas Star; a concealed “music closet” is designed for media and stereo systems; and an adjoining full bar, also paneled in pecan wood, connects the library with the reception hall.
Eyptian-inspired papyri pilasters designed by Dorothy Howe Dupree
Formal powder room
Library
Library and bar
Across the reception hall from the library, the breakfast room also overlooks the rear stone terrace through a wall of fixed and casement windows. Features include magnolia paneling and the magnificent return staircase, reclaimed from the Howe family’s earlier home on Elgin Street. The large kitchen features an adjoining breakfast room, a workstation with desk, the basement staircase, a service half-bathroom, and the back door to the breezeway and garage.
Breakfast room with magnolia paneling
Return staircase from Howe family home on Elgin street
Main staircase
The main staircase ascends to a rotunda landing that transitions into halls connecting the bedroom suites. The expansive master suite overlooks the rear lawn and gardens and encompasses a fireplace, dressing area, en suite bathroom, and walk-in closets; a second large bedroom overlooks the front approach and features a fireplace, en suite bathroom, and a walkin dressing area and closets; and two additional bedrooms have en suite bathrooms and walk-in closets. There is also a home office equipped with a built-in desk and cabinets, and a juice/coffee bar with sink located near the bedrooms. The third floor comprises an enormous finished space with hardwood floor, dormer windows and window seats, free-standing bookcases built for the space, a large walk-in storage closet, and a full (shower) bathroom. A breezeway travels from the kitchen to the two-car garage where an upstairs apartment has an exterior as well as an interior garage entrance. The apartment comprises a bedroom with kitchenette and bathroom and two additional bedrooms that share a bathroom.
Main staircase landing
Bedroom suite
Entrance to bedroom suites
Bedroom suite
Master bedroom suite
The Legacy: Dorothy and Dorothy Knox graciously opened Legend for many home and historical tours over the past 60 years. In recognition of the home’s significance in the historic, social, and architectural fabric of Houston, the Rice Design Alliance included it on a tour of Briscoe architecture in 1988 and on a tour focusing on the architectural history of River Oaks for the national meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians in 1999. Legend also featured prominently in the Museum of Natural History Guild (now the Museum of Natural Science Guild) Kitchen Tour of 1961.
Newport-style cupboard in dining room with Texas star
Dining room
Entrance to back garden
Rear elevation
Library door and terrace
BIBLIOGRAPHY City of Houston Landmark Designation Report for Legend Mrs. Knox B. Howe House | 4019 Inverness Drive
Author: Stephen Fox
Dorothy Knox Howe Houghton obituary, November 9, 2018 Dorothy Virginia Trone Howe Dupree obituary, July 5, 2009 Marketed by Mary Hale Lovett McLean, Greenwood King Properties Photos by Paul Hester and Mark Krampitz, TK Images Text written by Penny Jones
Mary Hale Lovett McLean Realtor® Associates
713.553.4255
mmclean@greenwoodking.com https://maryhalemclean.greenwoodking.com 3201 Kirby Drive, Houston, T X 7709 8
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