Dunlap - Simpson House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Dunlap-Simpson House in Ellis County. Now, most houses are content to have four walls and call it a day. But whoever sat down with Judge Oscar E.

Dunlap in 1890 and started drawing up plans for this place had a different idea entirely. This house, this Queen Anne Revival showpiece, went ahead and included two hexagon rooms and two octagon rooms. Six sides.

Eight sides. In a house. You almost want to walk through it just to find the corners, or rather, to discover there aren't any where you expected them.

The whole thing was built in 1890 and 1891, and when it was done, it was done right. Judge Dunlap himself, born in 1849, was no ordinary man to build an ordinary house. He was a banker, a political leader, an industrialist, a humanitarian, and a Good Roads advocate; which in those days meant he was fighting for something most folks took entirely for granted later on.

He chaired the Texas Council of Defense during World War I, and he founded the Sims Library right there in Waxahachie. A man wearing that many hats tends to want a house with rooms to match. After Dunlap's time, he passed in 1925, the house moved through the hands of people who clearly understood what they had.

Mr. and Mrs. E.B. Prince owned it.

Then Mrs. Sadie R. Hardesty.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Max H. Simpson, whose name the house now carries alongside the judge's own.

Some houses just accumulate history the way a good story accumulates weight: room by room, name by name, side by unexpected side.

What the marker says

A fine example of Queen Anne Revival architecture, this house has among its many rooms two hexagons, two octagons. It was built in 1890-91 by Judge Oscar E. Dunlap (1849-1925), a banker, political leader, chairman of Texas Council of Defense in World War I, Good Roads advocate, industrialist, humanitarian, founder of the Sims Library, Waxahachie. Later owners have included Mr. and Mrs. E.B. Prince, Mrs. Sadie R. Hardesty, and Mr. and Mrs. Max H. Simpson. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974