DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Reichenstein Home in Dallas County. Now, every good story has its own kind of architecture — the frame you build your life around — and Jacob Reichenstein understood that better than most. Born right there in Dallas in 1881, he wasn't imported from somewhere else, wasn't passing through.
This was his city, and he was going to make something of it. He started the way most great stories start: at the bottom. A clerk with Cowser and Company, back in 1902.
You know the type of job — learning the grain of the wood before you ever pick up the saw. He spent years in that trade, working the retail lumber business, getting to know every board and beam and bracket. And then, in 1915, Cowser and Company made him a partner and general manager.
Not bad for a Dallas boy who started as a clerk. But wait — three years after that, in 1918, he became president of the company. The whole thing.
Now the lumber trade isn't the flashiest corner of American commerce, but here's what you need to understand: without the lumber, there is no Dallas. Without the lumber, there is no house. And Jacob Reichenstein knew it.
So in 1931, at the height of his standing in this city, he built his family a home worthy of the life he'd constructed. He hired Dallas architects Marion Fooshee and James Cheek to design it, and what they gave him was something that still stops people in their tracks. Decorative brickwork.
Palladian transoms catching the light just so. And up top, a steeply-pitched hip roof — the kind of roofline that says permanence, that says I am not going anywhere. Jacob Reichenstein, Dallas native, one-time clerk, eventual president, passed on in 1950.
But that house he built in 1931? It's still standing. Turns out, when a man who made his living in lumber decides to build a home, he knows how to make it last.
What the marker says
Dallas native Jacob Reichenstein (1881 - 1950) became a leader in the city's retail lumber trade. Beginning as a clerk with Cowser and Company in 1902, he was made a partner and general manager in 1915 and president of the company three years later. This home, built for his family in 1931, was designed by Dallas architects Marion Fooshee and James Cheek. The Reichenstein home features decorative brickwork, Palladian transoms, and a steeply-pitched hip roof. RTHL - 1984