DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. There's a house in Tarrant County with a story that starts before the first nail was ever driven — starts, in fact, with a subdivision that didn't exist until 1907, when two men named D.T. Bomar and John W.
Broad opened it up for business. And this house, right here, was the very first one built in that whole development. The first.
Out of everything that would eventually rise on those lots, this one came first. Now that already makes it worth slowing down for. But here's where it gets interesting.
John W. Broad had spent a decade living on the West Coast — 1896 to 1906 — and when he came back and that subdivision got underway, those influences came with him. You can see them in the house itself, if you know what you're looking at.
A decade out West leaves marks. Then along comes Charles K. Lee in 1914.
And Charles K. Lee was not just anybody — the man would go on to become President of the State Bar Association. He bought the house, looked around, and decided it needed a little something more.
He added a room. He added a porte cochere. And then the Lees settled in and stayed fifteen years.
Fifteen years in a house the marker calls their home. But houses outlast their owners' intentions, and eventually this one passed to the Lucie C. Lee estate.
That's where Mrs. Gunhild Weber enters the story — 1944, she buys the house from that estate. A native of Norway.
A Fort Worth business executive. And by the time this marker was recorded, she had been the one holding the keys longer than anyone. The house carries her name now.
First home in a 1907 subdivision, shaped by a decade on the West Coast, elevated by a future bar association president, and claimed at last by a Norwegian-born executive who made Fort Worth her city. Some houses just collect stories. This one's been at it a while.
What the marker says
This was the first home built in a 1907 subdivision opened by D.T. Bomar and John W. Broad. It shows influences from the West Coast, where Broad lived from 1896 to 1906. Charles K. Lee, later a State Bar Association, President, bought the house in 1914. He added a room and porte cochere. The Lees lived here 15 years. Mrs. Gunhild Weber, a native of Norway and a Fort Worth business executive, has owned the house since buying it from the Lucie C. Lee estate, 1944. Recorded Texas Historical Landmark-1978.