Burton House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Burton House in Collin County. Pull up a chair; this one's got good bones, literally and figuratively. In 1910, somebody finished building a house.

Not just any house, mind you, but the kind of house that makes a person slow their car down and stare. It was built for Newton A. Burton and his wife Laura (Laura Wallace Burton, before she took that name) and the Burtons were not small-time folks.

Prominent business leaders, prominent civic leaders. The kind of people a town points to when it wants to show you what it's made of. Newton would live until 1955, Laura until 1964, and they had themselves a house that was going to outlast nearly everything else either of them ever touched.

Now, the man who designed this place was one J.E. Cooper, and Cooper had a vision that I can only describe as ambitious. He did not pick a style and stick with it; no sir.

He reached into the architectural grab bag and pulled out three. Bungalow. Classical revival.

American foursquare. All on one structure. One story, mind you.

One story carrying the weight of three traditions at once, and somehow it works. Cooper himself would pass in 1936, but his work was already standing on its own by then. What does it look like when you pull up?

Well. There's a wraparound porch (the kind that wraps its arms around a summer evening like it's got all the time in the world) held up by Doric columns, which is the serious, no-nonsense column, for those keeping score. Look up and you've got shingled hip dormers catching light from angles you didn't expect.

Look closer and you'll notice the rafter ends, exposed, not hidden away like the builder had something to apologize for. And then (and this is the detail that'll get you) stained glass transoms. Color falling through glass into whatever room is lucky enough to be on the other side.

J.E. Cooper didn't just design a house in 1910. He designed an argument that a thing can be practical and beautiful and a little bit surprising all at once.

The Burton House has been making that argument ever since.

What the marker says

Completed in 1910, this house was built for prominent business and civic leaders Newton A. Burton (d.1955) and Laura (Wallace) Burton (d.1964). Designed by J.E. Cooper (d.1936), the one-story eclectic structure features elements of the bungalow, classical revival, and American foursquare styles. Prominent features include a wraparound porch with doric columns, shingled hip dormers, exposed rafter ends, and stained glass Transoms.**Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1991***