Ball-Eddleman McFarland House – 1110 Penn Street

1110 Penn Street [NR/RTHL/CFW], Ball-Eddleman McFarland House, 1899; 1980-91.  One of only a handful of surviving nineteenth-century Victorian homes in Fort Worth, this impressive bluff top residence is located in an area known as Quality Hill.  At the turn-of-the-century it was home to many of Fort Worth’s cattlemen, bankers, and professional people.  Designed by Howard Messer, an English architect living in Fort Worth, the house was built for Sarah C. Ball, widow of the wealthy Galveston banker and philanthropist George Ball, and her son Frank M. Ball.

Mrs. Ball and her son moved to Fort Worth from Galveston in order to be able to spend part of the year living near the Joseph Pollock family (see CBD 133).  Dr. Pollock was Mrs. Ball’s physician. Frank M. Ball died in 1901, and Mrs. Ball lived here until her death in 1904.

William Harrison Eddleman purchased the house from the Ball estate in December, 1904.  Eddleman was a Weatherford, Texas banker who, in 1904, founded the Western National Bank in Fort Worth (CBD 98; the bank building was built in 1906) and moved his family into this house.  Western National Bank failed in 1913, and Eddleman turned to other business ventures.  In 1921 he deeded the house to his daughter, Caroline (Carrie) Eddleman McFarland.  Mrs. McFarland and her cattleman husband, Frank Hays McFarland, had lived in the house with the Eddlemans since 1904.

Frank Hays McFarland died in 1948, but Mrs. McFarland lived in and preserved the house until her death in 1978 at the age of 99.  In 1979 the house was purchased by the Junior League of Fort Worth and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.  In 1980, the house was designated as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. It is also a City of Fort Worth Landmark.  Now owned by Historic Fort Worth, Inc., the house has been preserved as it looked at the time of Mrs. McFarland’s death. It is maintained as a house museum and offices, and is available for rental for special events. 

Restoration work, including a major reconstruction of the sandstone front porch in 1990-91, has been carried out under the direction of John Volz of Volz and Associates of Austin.

The two-story house has the high broken roof line characteristic of the Queen Anne style, and displays a sumptuous use of materials including Pennsylvania pressed brick, sandstone, slate, and Georgian marble.  The interior of the house has patterned parquet floors, coffered ceilings, and walls paneled and trimmed with stained and carved oak and mahogany.

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