Family refurbishes, protects historic Moss House

As Katherine Allen turned onto Moss Circle Drive, she didn’t know what to expect.

She made her way to the end of the street, arriving at a dead-end. As she approached the circle, it appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

The Moss House.

Standing on the right-hand side of the elongated cul-de-sac, the venerable Colonial home is as stately as it is well-preserved.

“I called (my husband), and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to look at this house,’” Allen says. “The thing that’s so interesting about it is it just kind of pops out of nowhere. You don’t really realize it’s tucked back here, but it has so much rich history.”

The Allens bought the house in 2020 before heavily renovating it and finally moving in in 2022. But the remodel wasn’t about transforming the home. Instead, the Allens restored the home with a refreshed interior while staying true to its history.

“We just believe very strongly that this house belongs to itself. We see ourselves as stewards of the home. We don’t necessarily view ourselves as people who have a right to come in and make overwhelming changes. My husband and I are very committed to the history of the house, and everything we did was with the intention of doing right by the house. I hope we own it for a long time, and I would love it if my daughters ended up taking it over, but at the same time, we didn’t want to be the people that made some radical change that altered the history of the home.”

The Moss House’s history goes further back than most homes in Lake Highlands. The area surrounding the home was originally part of a 400-acre farm belonging to Andrew Sloan Jackson, who built a small homestead on the property.

As the story goes, wealthy Dallas oilman Harry S. Moss purchased the land after coming into possession of a hereford bull at the State Fair of Texas. He transformed the property into his country estate, eponymously named “Moss Haven” (yes, that’s where the name comes from). Moss and his wife, Florence, built on the existing farmhouse to create the present four-bedroom, four-bathroom structure.

The Moss weekend retreat was the epitome of high-class country estates at the time. Complete with a formal dining room sized for 20 people, stables, sitting rooms and even an elevator, the home was featured in Architectural Digest’s January 1958 issue. Much of the estate was eventually sold to developers and the City of Dallas, which converted 279 acres of the property into a park as part of then-Park and Recreation Director L.B. Houston’s greenbelt plan for the city.

After falling into disrepair, the house was purchased and heavily renovated by the Jamieson family in the 1970s. The family occupied the home until it was sold to the Allens in 2020.

“We were able to host a ton of stuff here and kind of reincorporate the house into the neighborhood,” Allen says. “The Jamiesons hadn’t had young children in the house, and Mrs. Jamieson was here alone for a really good chunk of time, and it kind of became this like folk tale to the kids, where they thought it was the principal’s house and they thought it was haunted, and all these other stories that kids come up with on the playground. And so it’s been fun, kind of bringing it back to life with little kids.”

The Allens partnered with Taylor McCabe of Mosaic Building Co. on the remodel. Beautiful hardwood floors, preserved underneath carpet for decades, were uncovered and finally allowed to shine. New fixtures were added, the bar received an update and most walls were repainted with neutral, demure tones.

In the living room, an original fireplace sits at the center of the home’s sitting area. Allen painted it black during the remodel but says it was still important to respect the past and maintain it.

The formal entryway, which Allen believes could possibly be the remains of the original farmhouse that sat on the land, was painted a deep teal, and the formal dining room was repapered in a floral print.

“There just aren’t dining rooms like this, and it is such a focal point in the house. And I told (our interior designer) I wanted the entry hall to feel like you’re walking into a jewel box, like you just open the door and it’s like, warm and cozy, and it’s dark, and then you walk into the dining room, and it’s this explosion of color and fun.”

The home’s kitchen was completely redone, with a large marble island and countertops complemented by a muted green tone and bronze fixtures.

Upstairs, each of the bedrooms has its own bath, and the master suite, originally built for Moss, has its own sitting area.

Katherine says the family enjoys the home and uses it for entertaining. It was featured as a stop on the Holiday in the Highlands Home Tour this last year and drew large crowds, with the Women’s League needing a traffic management plan for the cul-de-sac to keep cars moving.

A sign in the dining room reads WAML, which stands for “With All My Love.” Mr. Jamieson signed off his letters to his family with the phrase, and the sign is a nod to the family and the house they lived in for over 40 years. It’s still very much the home they lived in 1975, which is exactly what Katherine and Ryan intended.

“We wanted to make sure that if for some reason, the Mosses or the Jamiesons walked through the house, we would want them to be proud of it.”