DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice along for the ride. Way back in 1919, in the original Irving townsite, a man named A. Fred Joffre and his wife set out to build something that would last.
Joffre was one of Irving's best known early builders — so when he put up his own home, he built it right. What he raised was an airplane bungalow, one of those low-slung, wide-shouldered houses that felt modern and settled all at once. The kind of place that looks like it belongs exactly where it's standing.
The Joffres kept the home until 1936, when their daughter sold it. And that's where the story takes its first turn. Three years later, in 1939, a pioneer doctor named Franklin Monroe Gilbert and his wife Dorothy — a nurse herself — came through the door and made it something else entirely.
Something the neighborhood would come to depend on in ways nobody quite plans for. See, the Gilberts didn't just live here. They worked here.
Night and day, patients came to that front door — for examination, for medication, for emergency treatment. Help was available, and folks knew it. At least one baby was delivered inside those walls.
Think about that. A house that started as a builder's home became, in the hands of a doctor and a nurse, very nearly a hospital. For nearly thirty years, that went on.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, between 1947 and 1949, the Gilberts had Perma Stone applied to the outside of the house — changed its face a little, but kept the bones. Kept the character. Kept the defining features, including those unusual stacked porch posts that make the place look like nobody else built it.
Because nobody else did. An airplane bungalow built in 1919 by one of Irving's own, turned into a sanctuary for the sick by a doctor and a nurse who answered the door whenever someone knocked. That house is still standing.
And now you know what happened inside it.
What the marker says
One of Irving's best known early builders, A. Fred Joffre, and his wife built this airplane bungalow in 1919 in the original Irving townsite. Their daughter sold the home in 1936. Pioneer doctor Franklin Monroe Gilbert and his wife Dorothy, a nurse, purchased it in 1939. For nearly thirty years, patients came here night and day as they knew help was available for examination, medication and emergency treatment. At least one baby was delivered here. The Gilberts had Perma Stone applied to the house between 1947 and 1949 while retaining the character and defining features of the bungalow, such as the unusual stacked porch posts. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999