The house looks exactly as it did in 1926—the year House Beautiful published it. Tudor beams frame the original leaded-glass windows. The heavily treed lot presses in from all sides above Hackberry Creek. A century may have passed, but the 1925-built Tudor on Highland Parks' Beverly Drive in Dallas largely remains unchanged.
That is by design, and by devotion. Nancy Miller's family has stewarded since 1964 "and has kept it as painstakingly close to its original design as possible," says Ned Cammack of Coldwell Banker Realty who has listed the property for $7.5 million. Her appreciation for its history runs so deep she has an Instagram account dedicated to the storied property. "I want people to see how special it is, because we do not want it torn down when we sell it," she told D Magazine. "And we also want to be able to see all the things that have happened in it throughout the years."
The home was designed by Anton Franz Korn as his own residence, completed in 1925. Korn was among the most significant architects working in Dallas in the 1920s, designing homes for prominent Highland Park families before emerging by the 1930s as the city's preeminent architect of high-caliber residences. For his own home, he chose Beverly Drive. The interiors reflect his reverence for materials of architectural provenance. He sourced salvaged oak timbers from the grand Oriental Hotel when it was demolished in 1924, bringing them to the two-story great room that remains the home's defining space. That room is unlike almost anything else in Dallas. Twenty-foot stained glass windows anchor the east end, flooding the space with light that shifts color through the day. The salvaged beamed ceiling rises above a room that once reportedly hosted Italian tenor Giovanni Martinelli and Marie Korn, the architect's wife and a soprano soloist for the Dallas Symphony. A cozy alcove with a fireplace softens the grand scale; a second-floor landing overlooks it from above, framing a view of the timbered ceiling that has changed little in a hundred years.
In 1946, interior designer Earl Hart Miller (no relation to the current family) refreshed the timbers, pickling the wood to the warm, luminous finish visible today. His touch is so well integrated it reads as original. Cammack calls it "one of the most magnificent and memorable great rooms in DFW." Yet for all its grandeur, the room always managed to feel livable. "There was never a place we couldn't be," remembers Miller, as told to D Magazine. "The living room was for living; it was never the kind of place where you couldn't even go and sit."
The rest of the main level flows around that central room, flowing to a large formal dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, and den. While most rooms have been left virutally untouched, "the current owners added an elevator, front garage, breakfast room and enclosed sunroom, all in keeping with the original design," notes Cammack.
Upstairs, three bedrooms and three full baths occupy the second floor, arranged with the same attention to proportion that defines the rooms below. The third level holds two additional bedrooms and a full bath. An elevator, added by the current owners, connects all three floors without disrupting the home's period character.
The home offers a significant opportunity "to preserve a truly historic home in Highland Park," concludes Cammack, calling it "one of the iconic Grandes Dames of Highland Park." Alberto Garza's comments in D Magazine further emphasize this point. As the creator and owner of the architectural history platform Sidewalks of Dallas, told the publication: "The fact that Anton Korn designed it as his own home gives it an authenticity that simply cannot be recreated. Preserving it means honoring a rare piece of Dallas' architectural heritage and ensuring its beauty endures to inspire future generations."
A deed restriction on the property requires preservation of at least two exterior walls, ensuring that legacy holds.
View the complete listing by Ned Cammack of Coldwell Banker Realty.
