Warren-Crowell House

While in some ways typical of the large turn-of-the-century Colonial Revival houses built in Texas and elsewhere, the Warren-Crowell House has several unusual architectural and decorative features seldom found in contemporaneous houses in the state and which are even rarer for having survived intact. The decorative stencilled friezes are among the most significant of the period to be found in Texas, and most original paint colours as well as notable stained and bevelled glass, unusual Prairie School detailing, and original electrical and plumbing fixtures remain, unaltered. The house was designed by James E. Flanders, one of the most important area architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Finally, the house, built as a direct result of Texas' best-known oil boom, was the home of State Senator Robert Lee Warren, a figure of some prominence in the history of Terrell and later Dallas.

The Warren-Crowell House at first glance has many similarities with other Victorian and Edwardian Colonial Revival mansions in North Texas such as the A.H. Belo House in Dallas or the Wharton-Scott House in Fort Worth (both National Register properties); Colonial Revival design elements are treated in an emphatically non-academic manner, and the proportions of such houses are overscaled and at times overwhelming. However, among the uncertain eclectic detailing of the Warren-Crowell House are found surprising and significant features. Of major interest are the stencilled decorative friezes and ceilings found in six major rooms; the Louis XV frieze in the east room is elegant but conventional, but the Arts and Crafts Movement stencilling in the upper and lower halls and the north and west rooms is very unusual, and the Art Nouveau work in the dining (south) room is one of the extremely scarce manifestations of that style to be found in the state.

All stencilling was done by Keith and Company of Kansas City, who sent craftsmen to Terrell for six weeks to work on the Warren-Crowell House. The Prairie Style detailing -the front and balcony doorways and dining room cabinets and mantel is also exceptional for residential work in the area, and the stained glass executed in a Tiffany-like manner and found in several parts of the house should be noted as well. The survival of the above and other architectural and decorative detailing and fittings is not common and may be attributed to the fact that the structure has had only three owners, all of whom kept alterations and modernization to a minimum.

The Warren-Crowell House was built in 1903-04 by Robert Warren (1865-1952) and his wife Annie, shortly after the discovery of oil on a farm near Beaumont belonging to Mrs. Warren; it was, therefore, Spindletop money which enabled the Warrens to construct their home. Warren had been born in Harrison County, Texas, and moved to Terrell with his family in the early 1880's. While trained as a pharmacist, Warren chose to read law and later achieved a degree of success as an attorney. He married Annie T. Cartwright of San Augustine, whose forbear Matthew Cartwright had settled there in the 1820s. Warren served in the Texas State Senate from 1911 to 1915, where he was a colleague of the late Sam Rayburn. In 1920 the Warrens and their only child Annie Lee (wife of oilman and philanthropist Summerfield Griffith Roberts) moved to Dallas, where Warren worked in real estate and other investments until his death at age 87. His Terrell home was subsequently acquired by the W.C. McCord family, proprietors of a local mercantile establishment. In 1969 it was purchased by Murphy and Emily (Edwards) Crowell, and it received a Texas Historical Building Medallion in 1973.

The architect of the house was James Edward Flanders (1849-1928), one of the most prolific and versatile architects in North Texas in the period 1875-1915. Born in Chicago, Flanders apprenticed as an architect in Minneapolis before moving to Dallas in 1876. During the next forty years, he designed 125 structures (residential, institutional, commercial and ecclesiastical) in the area. A great many of these have since been demolished, but at least two the Shackleford County Courthouse in Albany and the Trinity Methodist Church in Dallas - are on the National Register of Historic Places. Flanders was a true eclectic architect and worked in a variety of styles including Eastlake, Second Empire, Prairie School and Gothic, Moorish and Colonial Revival styles. After moving to California in 1915, his repertoire expanded further, and he designed several handsome structures in a Greene & Greene style.