DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Stanley and Emily Finch House in Travis County. Now settle in, because sometimes the most remarkable stories are built one careful detail at a time — and this one was built, quite literally, for thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. That was back in 1927 and 1928, when a University of Texas civil engineering professor named Stanley P.
Finch and his wife Emily — she was a Rice before she married — decided they needed a home worthy of Austin. And they knew just who to call. Stanley went right to his colleague over at UT, an architect by the name of Raymond Everett, and Everett drew up a colonial revival house that, I'll tell you, is still standing intact to this day.
That right there is a testament to somebody doing their job well. But the story doesn't stop at the front door. Come the 1940s, a landscape architect named C.
Coatsworth Pinkney — and that is a name that sounds like it belongs on a deed of considerable importance — took hold of the grounds and shaped the landscape around the place. Then in 1945, an architect named Hugo Kuehne came along and added bay windows, giving the old colonial revival home a new set of eyes looking out onto the world. And if that wasn't enough, in 1951, architect J.
Roy White enclosed the original side porch. Layer by layer, hand by hand, each addition folded into the last without disturbing what came before. Several prominent Austinites left their mark on this one house — and the house, for its part, held onto every single one of them.
What the marker says
Constructed in 1927 and 1928 for $13,500, this house has associations with several prominent Austinites. Its original owners were University of Texas civil engineering Professor Stanley P. Finch and his wife Emily (Rice). Finch's UT colleague, architect Raymond Everett, designed the house. Landscape architect C. Coatsworth Pinkney created the landscape in the 1940s. The intact colonial revival home's historic additions include bay windows designed by Hugo Kuehne in 1945 and the enclosure of the original side porch by architect J. Roy White in 1951. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999