Four generations lived along historic Texas street

By Paige Phelps

Published: July 26, 2008

TERRELL, Texas — Susan Roberts' family has a long, colorful history occupying the homes on Grace Lane.

Roberts' great-grandparents moved to Terrell from Dallas, but the only way her great-grandfather could get her great-grandmother to agree to relocate was to build an exact replica of their house on Beverly and Lakeside drives in Highland Park.

Today, Roberts, a fifth-generation Terrell resident, lives down the lane from where her great-grandparents settled, occupying a peach-trimmed Louisiana-style cottage.

Built in 1938, the house belonged to Lila Couch, her grandmother's best friend.

"Since I was a child, I knew I loved this house,” Roberts said. "I wanted this house for its soul.”

She was determined to keep Couch's house and the 2 acres around it intact and untouched.

"Lila knew they would tear this house down if they could,” she said. "By zoning, you could build 12 houses here.”

Now, watched over by a large portrait of her great-grandmother Emily Simpson Griffith, who died in 1906, Roberts lives among a lifetime of accumulated memories and memorabilia. There's the circular sofa belonging to the home's former owner, originally covered in blue velvet and now more than 100 years old.

"It was frightening when I got it,” Roberts said, laughing.

She remembers Couch's family being embarrassed to offer the sofa because of its poor condition, but Roberts insisted she wanted it. It fit perfectly with her other eclectic furnishings of yesteryear: an antique opium chair covered in orange velvet, a hand-carved dining room set dating from the 1860s, a brass lamp from the 1893 World's Fair, the walrus tusk sitting on an 1827 tea box, along with a thousand other oddities, all attached to wild stories told with Roberts' customary flair.

First-time visitors are usually dumbstruck when they enter the front door.

"Some of my friends say, ‘Oh, my God, there's so much color,' or it's, ‘Oh, my God, I'm only going to be here an hour; this is going to take me a week (to look at everything).'”

Originally built for $5,000, the Couch house has no hallways — the rooms are all connected, one after the other, as was the fashion of the day, and there is still no insulation. Homes of that era had walls covered only in burlap and muslin under wallpaper, so Roberts painted over the burlap in some rooms and covered other walls with fabric. But there are still places where drafts gently brush the back of your neck.

Upstairs, where Couch lived in one room and her husband in the other, there was one tiny bath. One day, according to Roberts, Couch was so fed up with the situation that she decided to build her own bathroom inside her bedroom.

Roberts has since put up screens and fabric to separate the room but still pays homage to Lila with a pair of her black high heels, timelessly chic, that stand beside the chaise.

In fact, there are several invented walls throughout the house that Roberts created out of fabric ("There's no wall space in these old homes,” she said).

Robert Rutherford, owner of Rutherford's in Dallas, collaborated with Roberts on the kaleidoscope of color and pattern that drape her home, the best example of their work being the enclosed sunroom that houses innumerable chairs, pillows and sofas, including a longhorn chair from the 1930s, all with individual personalities.

"I get teased about having so much stuff in the house,” Roberts said. "And I get confused on where the stuff came from and what it is, but I just like to revisit it all.”

Roberts is active in the Terrell City Council, pushing to preserve historic buildings; the city doesn't have zoning that protects historic residential structures.

After spending most of her life living in large cities, Roberts feels strongly that Terrell's small-town charm is something that cannot be taken for granted.

"I guess it's because of not only the heritage of the city, but my great-grandparents and grandparents and my grandmother's best friend lived here and I spent a lot of time here, growing up,” she said.

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

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