DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, 1912 is a year worth remembering out here in Irving, Texas. That's the year Charles P.
Schulze — born in 1877, a man who knew his way around good wood — sat down with a builder named A. Fred Joffre and said, in so many words, build me something worth keepin'. And Joffre did exactly that.
What they raised together was a one-story bungalow clad in cypress — and if you know anything about cypress, you know that's a wood that doesn't give up easy. Low hipped roof, broad eaves reaching out like the place was trying to shade the whole street, and a gabled dormer perched up top keeping watch. This wasn't a house thrown together.
This was a residence, built deliberate, built to last. Charles had reasons to put down roots. He owned and operated the Irving Lumber Company — so a man who dealt in wood every working day of his life chose cypress for his own home.
That detail has a kind of quiet pride to it. And he had someone worth building for: his wife, Virginia Tucker, born in 1886, who would go on to outlive him by nearly a decade. Now here's the thread that ties this house to the town around it.
Charles P. Schulze was the brother of J. O.
Schulze — one of the co-founders of Irving itself. The town and this family were woven together from the start. The house stayed in the Schulze family all the way until 1975.
Sixty-three years under one family's roof. Virginia, born in 1886, passed in 1966 — and still that house held on a few more years before it passed into other hands. Some houses are built to shelter a season.
The Schulze House was built to outlast a lifetime — and it just about did.
What the marker says
In 1912 Charles P. Schulze (1877 - 1957) contracted with builder A. Fred Joffre to construct this one-story cypress-clad bungalow as a residence for himself and his wife, Virginia Tucker (1886 - 1966). Schulze, who owned and operated the Irving Lumber Company, was the brother of Irving co-founder J. O. Schulze. Prominent features of the home include its low hipped roof, broad eaves, and gabled dormer. It remained in the Schulze family until 1975. RTHL - 1986