I reside in a house that was reportedly constructed within the Nineteen Twenties by Prassel Lumber. After we purchased the home in 2000, my husband and I have been instructed it was known as “Prassel’s Fort.” I’m making use of for a grant to assist defray the price of repairing and restoring the home windows and tile on the tower, however I must fill within the particulars of the historical past of the home. I’m not certain the place to search for the data, and I used to be questioning in the event you would level me in the fitting path. The home is in Alamo Heights on Cloverleaf Avenue, and I imagine it was in-built 1927 for a household named Crenshaw. I’m questioning if the primary proprietor’s final title started with a C, as a result of the wrought-iron panels within the eating and dwelling rooms have what appears like two C’s again to again. I’d recognize any insights.
— Nora Walker, M.D.
Your own home was a recurring character, and even took a starring position within the San Antonio Mild’s actual property part for a number of months in 1927, when it appeared ceaselessly in promoting and advertorials. Its exuberant street-facing character — cylindrical tower, peaked roofs, different-height plenty with crenellations and home windows of many sizes and styles — and general Spanish/Moorish swag made the papers many times. An advert within the Mild, Feb. 6, 1927, asserting an upcoming open home there, promised “a uncommon deal with for lovers of gorgeous properties.”
The advert went on to explain a few of its options. The outside was stucco over Stone-Tile (tile over concrete); inside have been a “stunning marble entrance corridor, giant front room with fire and studio window, good-looking eating room round in kind, breakfast room, kitchen, pantry, terrace, servants’ quarters, double storage, three bedrooms and two baths.” The home was staged by Stowers Furnishings, together with Persian rugs and maroon leather-based draperies. Patrons had the choice of taking the home furnished or unfurnished. Landscaping was full, with lawns, mature bushes and flowering shrubs.
Yours was among the many first of greater than 20 homes constructed by Amye Bozarth, whose enterprise slogan known as them “Houses, not homes.” All these undertaken in her first years have been high-end residences. She labored in partnership with F.L. Hillyer, whose firm financed development and offered constructing supplies; and H.C. Thorman (mentioned right here Might 14), developer of the Olmos Park neighborhoods the place her first initiatives have been sited.
By the top of 1928, Bozarth’s adverts referred to her “constructing program” for $1 million in residential development. It was a time when actual property was a white-hot trade in San Antonio. Industrial development was elevating the skyline with buildings such because the Smith-Younger Tower (now Tower Life Constructing), Medical Arts Constructing (now Emily Morgan Lodge), Milam Constructing, Nix Hospital and the previous Categorical-Information constructing. On the similar time, suburban builders have been extending residential boundaries in each path and at each value level. Within the late Nineteen Twenties, you would purchase a modest home for underneath $1,000 or a mansion on a hilltop for as a lot as you preferred and will pay.
Bozarth’s have been true dream homes, on the excessive finish of the market, positioned for scenic views and prevailing breezes. Sometimes called one of many metropolis’s foremost feminine builders, she turned her gender to a bonus, noting in her advertorials that “it’s logical to imagine {that a} girl, the pure homemaker, is greatest outfitted to plan a house.”
A ground plan from Ayres & Ayres structure agency reveals the southeast elevation of the Amye Bozarth Home on Devine Highway. It was constructed as a mannequin house, however the builder lived there and labored out of her house for a number of years.
Courtesy Texana/Family tree Room, San Antonio Public LibraryWhereas she labored with main architects, together with Atlee B. Ayres, Robert H.H. Hugman and John M. Marriott, she added her personal touches to their plans “within the curiosity of homey ambiance.” That included kitchens with “each fashionable comfort recognized to fashionable house development,” baths for each bed room, back and front porches, balconies in and out, butler’s pantries, corridor closets for wraps, conservatories for flowers, billiard rooms, sunrooms or libraries if that’s what the proprietor wished.
Bozarth’s homes additionally boasted state-of-the-art tech for his or her time — air flow followers, kitchen exhaust followers, water softeners, service bells and different “mechanical servants.”
Regardless of her affinity for luxurious, Bozarth hadn’t come from a rich background.
Born in 1884 in Denison to a Danish immigrant and his spouse, Amye Johnson married George W. Bozarth at age 19. Widowed six years later, she couldn’t precisely go house once more since her mother and father had divorced, remarried and relocated.
As Amye Bozarth, she turns up within the 1910 U.S. Census dwelling along with her mom, who stored a boarding home in Clovis, N.M., the place Bozarth was working as a milliner. This was her first recognized career, and it should have given her an eye fixed for design in addition to customer support abilities. She then progressed from trimming hats at Foley’s division retailer in Houston in 1913 to a store of her personal in Dallas from 1914 via 1921. After an intensive journey to the Far East — Japan, China and Hong Kong, with a cease within the Philippines on her manner again — she moved to San Antonio, the place her sister Besse lived along with her husband, an Military captain at Fort Sam Houston.
Bozarth first seems within the San Antonio metropolis directories in 1924 — no occupation for the primary few years, however she kinds herself as “Mrs. Amye Bozarth (widow, G.W.),” and that’s the surname she stored throughout temporary marriages to grease discipline employee Horace C. Thompson (1928-29) and buying agent S.R. McAlary (1929-30). In the meantime, she was constructing her enterprise identification. She made one in every of her mannequin properties her residence in addition to her workplace.
Generally known as the Amye Bozarth Home, the mansion on Devine Highway neglected the Olmos Dam and future house of Olmos Basin Park. Designed by Ayres and accomplished in 1927, it additionally was within the Spanish fashion and had a tower on the road façade with round stairs inside and a copper weathervane on high.
“Utterly asymmetrical, the home meandered via a collection of 40-degree angles, quite a few modifications of wall planes, full of life with an excellent number of styles and sizes of openings,” writes Robert James Coote in “The Eclectic Odyssey of Atlee B. Ayres, Architect,” supplied by the Texana/Family tree Room of the San Antonio Public Library. “Uncommon for Ayres, there have been purely ornamental conceits,” Coote noticed, comparable to semicircular arches, stucco grilles, darkish wooden shutters and balconies with flower-pot holders; a two-story front room with false beams and a round window with amber glass — “a captivating collection of nice surprises.”
At one level in 1928, Bozarth had seven residential initiatives in numerous levels of completion. However with the onset of the Nice Despair, the marketplace for opulent homes dwindled. The high-flying builder joined the true property agency of Richey & Casey as an agent specializing in North Aspect properties.
After she married a fourth time, to engineer Earl Van Guyther, she added his final title to grow to be Amy Bozarth Guyther professionally, and the couple went into the home-construction enterprise collectively, constructing smaller, less- grand homes in Terrell Hills and the Woodlawn space.
Your own home — marketed as “Designed and constructed by Amye Bozarth” — didn’t promote as quick as she most likely wanted it to, with a number of different initiatives in progress. First supplied in February 1927, it hadn’t offered by July of that yr, when it was marketed on the market by sealed bid, “a sensational alternative to purchase at your individual value.”
Oilman George R. Eggleston; his spouse, Ora; and their two daughters have been the primary household to reside in the home, in line with metropolis listing listings. The Egglestons relocated to Houston in 1936, and lawyer James W. Crenshaw and his spouse, Eleanor, moved within the following yr. The Crenshaws, who had no kids, remained within the Cloverleaf home via his demise in 1978.
As a solo practitioner who additionally headed funding and oil-royalty firms and married to a distinguished clubwoman, Crenshaw and his spouse may need taken to the thought of a double-C monogram at a while of their 40-plus years in the home. Its wrought-iron work was finished by Theo. Voss, Inventive Scroll Metallic Works Inc. (later Voss Metallic Works), so the Chanel-like initials weren’t a maker’s mark.
Bozarth’s promoting at all times emphasised high quality supplies and workmanship.
Requested to contribute to an “Amye Bozarth Houses Particular Part,” Dick Prassel of Prassel Sash and Door (later Prassel Lumber) wrote a letter noting that “she purchases solely high-grade millwork and settles (pays) proper now.”
If something, Prassel stated, “Mrs. Bozarth is constructing too properly. I attempted to get her to make use of lighter studs and joists, however she insists on greatest.”
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