 |
The house is built in a U-shape to take advantage of the verdant courtyard, which is bisected by a creek that becomes a rushing stream after it rains. |
A River Runs Through It
82-year-old David Webster George built a masterpiece of architecture atop a flood plain and a limestone creek bed. When it rains, the creek swells into a torrent of water. His mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright, would have loved it.
 |
| “My design concept was to honor the work of both this architect and his great teacher, to maintain the dignity of the original design,” says Hamill. Harry chairs and Charles chaise from B&B Italia; Berman Rosetti bench in Pollack fabric; hallway painting by Mark Whitmarsh; Corbin Bronze scuplture; rugs from owners private collection. |
The land had lain fallow for more than 20 years. Not many people would have been crazy enough to build on a flood plain, and besides that, a drainage ditch cuts diagonally through the property, dividing it awkwardly. Flooding would always be a possibility. “The property had so many problems that no one wanted it,” says David Webster George of the wooded lot on Northhaven Road in Preston Hollow, which he helped find for his clients in 1991. “But we picked it up at a bargain and took the problems and made them into wins.”
George, one of about 10 living architects who worked under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin until his death in 1959, uses Wright’s organic approach in everything he designs. Wright was a master at designing houses to coexist naturally with difficult terrain. One of his most famous houses, Fallingwater, cantilevers dramatically over a rock outcropping and a rushing stream. “He was such an influence,” says George. “He taught me to respect the environment and nature. That’s remained pretty strong within me.”
 |
| A sketched blueprint by architect David Webster George shows how the U-shaped house works with – not against – the winding creek. |
Like Wright’s Fallingwater, George used the land’s challenges to his best advantage when designing the house on Northhaven. Because the city required ready access to the drainage ditch in case emergency repairs needed to be made, officials had never allowed a bridge to be constructed. But George presented them with a design for a bridge with a removable floor that could be detached quickly to allow the city’s big equipment inside if needed. The resulting design, which the city accepted, is as beautiful as it is functional. It also allows both sides of the property to be built on, which was crucial. “There is a lot of necessity and imagination in that bridge,” says George, who began working with the home’s second set of owners, Barbara and Royce Hunter, after they hired him to build a study and a garage-slash-project cabana and hired Carole Hamill to design the interiors. “What we loved about the house was that when you drive by you can’t even tell there’s anything there,” says Barbara. “That was important for us because we were moving from a house on four acres of forested land with all kinds of wildlife. We knew we’d miss that.”
 |
| Light pours into the simple and serene kitchen. Minotti Braque sectional; Maxalto end table; Tufenkian Tibetan rug; Henry Dunay glass art. |
While some architects might have bulldozed the trees to clear a proper front yard and create an easier entry, George nestled the house inside the woods; you can only get to it by driving down a narrow paved drive. The front door is accessed only by crossing the bridge, deftly designed to look like a broad, wood-planked veranda. The 4,600-square-foot house is built in a series of long, glassed-in galleries that make a U-shape over and around the creek. The house was built as close to the creek line as possible while remaining about four feet above flood level. “We respected the creek,” says George. “It is the most prominent part of the house. We used a lot of the limestone as our masonry material, and used brick throughout the house that we treated to look like antique limestone.”
Rough cedar timbers, stained to look like weathered driftwood, are exposed within the house’s framing. A gabled roof, which George calls a “Texas look,” gives the interiors an airy, lofty feel. Twenty-inch brick columns set apart by floor-to-ceiling glass windows are a prominent part of the architecture. The large windows and skylights act as passive solar conductors, absorbing warmth during winter months when the sun hits the living room and entry at low angles. An insulated roof deck helps keep heat and air conditioning inside. Above the windows, George installed six-inch-wide hinged boards that can be opened to cross-ventilate the house. “The windows show off everything you bring into the house,” says Barbara Hunter.
Much to the happiness of the Hunters, who love wildlife, every room affords a view of the creek and surrounding greenery, which attract raccoons, possums, woodpeckers, and migratory birds. Thanks to the creek, the gnarled piece of land that George once described as “a field with a gash across it” is now a serene refuge, inside and out. “That creek posed the biggest challenge of all when building this house,” says George. “But once we figured out how to work with it, we realized that we were better off with it than not.”
———————-
 |
LONE STAR
82-year-old David Webster George is one of the last living architects who worked under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, the legendary house in Wisconsin where some of the most memorable examples of organic architecture were conceived. George was a Taliesin Fellow beginning in 1947 and worked closely with him on the Dallas Theater Center, completed in 1961. He also worked with Wright on a number of houses throughout the Midwest until Wright’s death. He designed Horseshoe Bay, a resort community on Lake LBJ in the Central Texas Hill Country, revered for the way it blends into the surrounding landscape. In the early 1970s, George took an undistinguished, cavernous rectangular barn in north Dallas and turned it into a visually exciting space for craft shops and specialty stores called Olla Podrida. A recipient of 12 architectural design awards, he has received recognition from the Architectural League of New York and the American Federation of Arts. His work has appeared in many magazines, including House Beautiful, Southern Living, Texas Architect, and Travel + Leisure. For George, architecture has always been an integral part of the land. During WWII, he lived under, and in the attics of, many stone farmhouses in France and Germany. “Architecture sort of got into my bones,” he says. RS
