100-year-old home in historic Fort Worth African-American community preserved
As a child growing up in Historic Southside in the 1950s, Wanda Perry would fling open their windows and shout at the top of her lungs whenever she had to get the attention of her cousins or family friends.
Her parent’s childhood pals whom she knew as aunt and uncle resided in the home right next door, while five cousins and other relatives were in the house behind theirs. Wanda, an only child raised by her parents and her grandparents, would shout at them when it was time to run over for a home-cooked meal or a lavish party. Their home, she remembers, was the place to come together, usually with someone playing the piano.
In those days, Wanda, 69, said there was a sense of “togetherness” around the Fort Worth community filled with the African-American elites of the day like doctors and lawyers. The area was known among residents as “Bill McDonald’s Neighborhood,” named for Texas’ first black millionaire, who would buy up properties to sell them to black families.
Wanda’s family home on East Terrell Avenue, however, started out in her own family, when her grandparents constructed it using boards of shiplap wood in 1920.
The historic neighborhood has changed a lot in the nearly 100 years since the home was built, with many of the aging homes coming down in place of newer ones. But Wanda’s family home — a relic of another era in the history of Fort Worth — is strong as ever, thanks to a family she had never met that wanted to save it.
“It’s just a joy to know that I can always come to Fort Worth and see my home, and then I can visualize what it looked like when I was a girl,” said Wanda, who now lives with her daughter, Kendra, in Corpus Christi. “Now I can look at it as a brand new home, updated — my grandparents and parents would be very happy to know that this has happened.”
Al Schmidt, of Dallas, spent the past 17 months with a contracting crew renovating and restoring the home, trying to retain what made it special while making it more modern, especially on the inside. His son had bought the home in 2017 to flip it, but when his plans changed, Schmidt swooped in to take over the project.
The renovation, on the one hand, was a fairly straightforward, albeit time-consuming and difficult, job for Schmidt — bring a nearly 100-year-old home into the 21st century and sell it to an interested buyer.
But, as he learned throughout the project, it’s about a lot more than that.
It’s about keeping a part of Fort Worth history, and a family’s history, alive.
“The more I learned about the history of the whole neighborhood, and the fact that it was a historical district, and the fact that this was a big African-American settlement in the late 1800s, early 1900s — I was like, ‘Wow, I mean, we could be like trendsetters,’” Schmidt said. “As far as hoping to ignite and inspire others to restore and rebuild some of the character back in the neighborhood.”
Many of the renovations, he said, were about retaining the character of the original home. Schmidt and his crew scraped at the interior walls, removing wallpaper and other layers of cloth, to expose the original shiplap, a fairly basic type of wood associated with barns. They then painted it white.
They also tried to keep as many of the original sash windows as possible, only replacing six of the 25 around the home. But there was a lot that changed, Schmidt said.
They pulled up the old tile floors and replaced them with dark hardwood. They worked with electricians to rewire the home and plumbers to replace all the piping. They took out walls, put in columns and created new areas, like a small utility room and a big walk-in closet.
As Schmidt was completing the home and preparing for an open house on Saturday, he talked about the project with Maribeth Ashley, the director of the district where the home is located, District 8. Taken with the historical preservation, Ashley searched through historical records to find a way to reach out to Wanda and Kendra.
They were contacted 10 days ago and told about the renovations, and that the home is now a protected historical structure. And they knew they couldn’t miss the open house.
“Knowing my mom’s dream that this house will be there, that it’s not going to be torn down is giving us all a sense of peace,” said Kendra, whose 40th birthday happened to be Saturday. “I know that my grandparents are jumping for joy in heaven with my great-grandparents.”
She and her mother on Saturday walked through the home they sold back in 2000, and several family members and friends from back in the day showed up. They reminisced.
Wanda remembered how her father had a chicken coop in the backyard and gardens in the front and backyard that he tended to. She remembered their Christmas parties, where she would play “Silent Night” on the piano over and over. She remembered running up their stairs, getting punished by her father, sleeping in the room with her parents because she was scared.
Kendra, who was raised with her older brother in Amarillo, would come up every summer and on holidays. She recalls their pullout couch, and how she would beg to sleep on the fascinating contraption, as well as the chair by the window where her grandfather could watch people passing by.
The home, Wanda and Kendra said, is filled with too many funny stories and big moments to count.
They’re glad it will stand for a long time to come.
“I have been reassured that nothing is going to happen to the house,” Wanda said. “This house will be here for my grandbaby to see it, and their children.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2019 at 6:52 PM.
