The home and property at 4500 Preston Road in Dallas, which was acquired by the late Margaret and F. Trammell Crow in 1961, for decades has been known as one of the finest, most historic estates in Dallas. So it naturally made for the perfect setting when the Dallas Historical Society held its black-tie Fellows Dinner there on Thursday, April 23. The Fellows group is the society’s major membership level.
Current Fellows co-chairs Allie Beth and Pierce Allman, who are marketing the Crow property through their real estate company, welcomed more than 70 guests to the sprawling, 103-year-old Tudor-style manse. Among them: Tincy Miller, Margot and Ross Perot, Susan and Joel Williams (he’s the Highland Park mayor), Madeline Jobst, Dr. Delva and Johnie King, and Itzel and Nathan Crow (he’s the grandson of Margaret and Trammell).
As guests enjoyed passed canapés including spinach asiago grilled cheese sandwiches and Pernod and dill cured salmon crostini, Pierce was explaining that the property, which sits on 6.6 acres, is one of just five multi-acre sites on Preston between Lakeside and Beverly. Miller, who serves on the State Board of Education, was chatting about her battles in Austin against the Common Core academic standards. And Caro Stalcup—she was the Fellows Dinner co-chair, along with Louise Caldwell—was reminiscing about how her grandmother and grandfather, Caro Buxton Edwards and H. L. Edwards, had had the home at 4500 Preston designed by C.D. Hill, a well-known Dallas architect. (It was Caldwell, by the way, who re-established the Dallas Historical Society Fellows in 1982 with Stanley Marcus.)
With dinner service underway—think baby greens salad, rosemary crusted beef tenderloin, corn pudding, and orange-ginger chocolate cake or Mascarpone ice cream—Lynn and Allan McBee, co-chairs of the society’s board of trustees, welcomed everyone before giving way to Allie Beth and Pierce. The latter made a joke: “Does everyone like the dinner?” he asked. “I’m from Arkansas, where a 7-course meal is a six-pack and a possum.”
Then Pierce turned serious, calling the Crow Estate one of “the most significant properties in Dallas County” and introducing the evening’s featured speakers: Stalcup, her brother John Alexander, and their nephew Stuart Thomas. Caro recounted details of the family’s history, stretching back to H.L. Edwards’ birth in Wales, his immigration to Texas as a young man, and his great success here in the cotton business.
Caro’s grandmother was a niece of A.H. Belo, she went on, recalling how, as a child, she often played in the attic and hunted for Easter eggs in the Preston Road mansion. John also remembered the home, 65 years ago: “I could climb up in the magnolias and look in the windows and see what was going on,” he said, drawing laughter. One time on the property, Caro added, her mother put a drop of bourbon in the chicken feed, and the chickens got so “warm and tipsy” they had to be helped up on the roost.
Then all too quickly the evening came to a close, and some realized the irony in celebrating the heritage of the grand old Crow Estate. With a price tag of just under $60 million, the mansion is likely to be torn down by its new owners, who probably will want a more contemporary home in its place.
Photo credit: Steve Foxall