Friday House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Friday House in Tarrant County. It's a story about land, craft, and the quiet kind of permanence that brick and good design can hold onto across the decades. Pull over if you want a good look, because this one earns it.

In 1923, Marion and Willie Maybelle Friday purchased a hundred and twelve and a half acres, this site among them, with two things in mind: build a home, and farm. That combination tells you something about the Fridays right there. Marion was a civil engineer, the kind of man who shaped the ground beneath entire cities.

He built waterways and sewer systems in Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, and other small Texas cities. He knew how water moved, how cities breathed, how infrastructure holds a place together. And then he came home to a hundred and twelve and a half acres and got his hands in the dirt.

Now the house itself, well, that's where the story gets interesting in ways that a trained eye will appreciate. It's a brick foursquare plan, which sounds plain enough until you start looking at what the builder was doing with it. This structure is a hybrid, part prairie school, part classical, and neither side of that argument lost.

On the prairie school side you've got a hipped roof, a wraparound porch, overhanging eaves, and a porte cochere with a balustrade sitting right above it. Then the classical tradition steps in with porch columns and a broken pediment front entryway. Those two design philosophies don't always shake hands so gracefully, but here they do.

The Fridays held onto their place until 1937, when they sold the house to the Cox family. The Cox family, in turn, sold it in 1946 to the Young family. And the Youngs, well, they stayed.

They owned the property for fifty years. Fifty years of seasons on that land the Fridays picked out in 1923. That brick foursquare stood through all of it, hipped roof and broken pediment and all, still holding its ground.

What the marker says

In 1923, Marion and Willie Maybelle Friday purchased 112.5 acres including this site on which to build a home and pursue their love of farming. Mr. Friday was a civil engineer who built waterways and sewer systems in Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington and other small Texas cities. The Fridays sold the house in 1937 to the Cox family, who sold it in 1946 to the Young family. The Youngs owned the property for fifty years. An excellent example of a brick foursquare plan, the structure is a hybrid of strong prairie school and classical influences. Prairie school characteristics include the hipped roof, wraparound porch, overhanding eaves and porte cochere with balustrade above. Classical features include the porch columns and broken pediment front entryway. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999