L. A. Scott Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, if you want to know how to read a house, really read it, you start at the nails. The square nails on the first floor of this Queen Anne residence out in McKinney, Collin County, they tell you something important: this place was standing before the late 1880s.

That's how old it is. Not because anybody wrote it down in a deed you can find easy, but because the nails say so. Square nails.

The house confesses its own age right there in the wood. It started as a one-story structure. Modest.

Sitting quiet on its lot. And then along comes Louis Alfred Scott. Born in 1852.

He purchases the home right around the turn of the century, sometime after 1900, and friends, that is where this house decides it has bigger ambitions. Soon after Scott takes ownership, a second floor goes up. Then a third.

The place is reaching for the sky like it's trying to impress somebody. And maybe it was. Because Louis Alfred Scott wasn't just any new owner; he became a successful McKinney businessman and an active civic leader.

A man with that kind of standing in a town, well, his home tends to reflect it. And reflect it this one does. Step back and look at her.

There's an octagon tower (not a square one, not a plain one, an octagon). Eight sides of pure architectural intention. There's gingerbread detailing laced across the exterior, the kind of woodwork that takes patience and pride in equal measure.

And anchoring the whole composition, a colonial revival porch. Queen Anne style, built before the late 1880s on its original bones, then raised up floor by floor after 1900, and still standing in McKinney to tell the tale. Louis Alfred Scott lived until 1934.

That's over three decades in a house that grew right along with the life he built here. Some homes just hold a story still. This one holds three floors of it.

What the marker says

Square nails used on the first floor of this Queen Anne style residence suggest a construction date before the late 1880s. Originally a one-story structure, the second and third floors were added soon after 1900, when the home was purchased by Louis Alfred Scott (1852-1934), who became a successful McKinney businessman and active civic leader. Outstanding features of the home include its octagon tower, gingerbread detailing, and colonial revival porch. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983