No one knows why it took 15 years to build 4125 Junius St. The building permit for the stately Greek Revival mansion dates back to 1905. But according to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, the home wasn’t completed until 1920.
“We heard different stories about the 1920 date,” listing agent Becky Oliver says. Certainly, a home as grand as this would’ve taken a while to construct. But she heard that a downtown fire likely burned public records, so she thinks 1920 might not have been the real completion date.
When that first permit was filed 119 years ago, the Peak’s Suburban Addition house was intended to be the home of a surgeon at the nearby Baylor Hospital. As is the tale of many big, old East Dallas estates, the house was converted into a women’s boarding house at some point in its history. (The men stayed next door.) It reverted back to a single-family residence for a period, before it was turned into a bed and breakfast in 2000. It operated as The Corinthian Bed & Breakfast for more than 20 years until it was sold again in 2022. The current owners have run it as a short-term rental, but its new owners could convert it into whatever they want, Oliver says.
“The thing that makes this house really special is that it could be a lot of different things,” she says. It still has a special use permit through 2027 to be a bed and breakfast. (The current owner is willing to sell it fully furnished, including the linens and cookware.) It’s only about 10 minutes from downtown, Uptown, and Deep Ellum. “It’s a really nice central location to be able to get to a lot of really cool parts of town,” Oliver says.
It’s also in a planned development district, so if you wanted to use the house a business, it wouldn’t be too hard, Oliver says. You’d be amongst peers—there are several churches and businesses, like an Aldi’s and another bed and breakfast, on the block. Baylor is still close. But if you wanted to convert it back to a single-family home, there are plenty of those nearby as well.
No matter its future use, the home has heaps of turn-of-the-century character. Oliver loves the huge windows, the columns, the woodwork, and the pocket doors. Sliding into walls instead of swinging out, pocket doors were popular in that era. They gave the doorways “more of an open feel,” but you could still slide them closed to “to feel more intimate,” she says.
The property has been painstakingly restored over the years. After they bought it in 2000, the bed and breakfast owners gutted and redid the whole house. They added on and expanded the kitchen and back family room. Previously, the floors were carpeted and the pocket doors and wood casings were painted white, so they hand sanded it all and restored all the original wood. The showpiece is the ornate inlay floors in the foyer. “They’re just spectacular when you walk in and look down,” Oliver says. They also renovated the carriage house in the backyard, converting it into two separate apartments.
The current owners also did their own renovations. They redid the primary bathroom and expanded the back porch. They repainted the exteriors and repainted some of the interiors, changed many of the wallpapers, and ripped out the carpet on the stairs and second-floor landing. They also switched out and modernized some of the furnishings, like the rugs.
All that work has brought the home back “to its original glory,” Oliver says. It’s a house that people don’t just build anymore.
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