Tom Lloyd Burnett Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Now, when a man builds a house in Iowa Park, Texas, he's making a statement. And when that man is Tom Lloyd Burnett, prominent cattleman and civic leader, born in 1871, well, the statement tends to be a substantial one.

In 1924, Burnett had this house built, and he didn't just call up any carpenter with a hammer and a dream. He brought in the Wichita Falls architectural firm of Voelcker and Dixon, and those gentlemen delivered something worth talking about. A colonial revival residence, which around here already turns a few heads, but then you look up at the roofline, and that's where it gets interesting.

A Dutch Gambrel roof with a clipped gable. The kind of detail that makes a house a landmark before anybody official says so. And Iowa Park did come to think of it exactly that way.

Now, Tom Lloyd Burnett lived with that house and that roofline until his death in 1938. After that, the home didn't sit empty and quiet. It passed to his cousin, Will Burnett, a rancher and civic leader in his own right, and Will's wife, Maggie, born a Denny.

So the Burnett name stayed on the house, and the house stayed a part of the community it had helped define. Some structures outlast their builders by holding the right people. This one managed to do just that.

What the marker says

Prominent cattleman and civic leader Tom Lloyd Burnet (b. 1871) had this house built in 1924. The colonial revival residence was designed by the Wichita Falls architectural firm of Voelcker and Dixon. After Burnett's death in 1938, the house became the residence of his cousin, rancher and civic leader Will Burnett, and his wife, Maggie (Denny). The Burnett home, an Iowa Park landmark, features a Dutch Gambril roof with a clipped gable. (Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983.)