Built to be the Fort Worth Star- Telegram’s “Home Beautiful” of 1930, the Farrell House served as the flagship of the Westover Hills development. The house was designed by architect Victor Marr Curtis, who accompanied A. C. Luther to Fort Worth in 1929 to build houses in the Fort Worth Extension Company’s Westover Hills development. Byrne & Luther, Inc. was the contracting firm responsible for the job. Mrs. C. B. Whitehead’s landscaping firm designed the grounds. The formal opening of the model house was August 3, 1930; John E. Farrell purchased the property one month later. Farrell, one of the discoverers of the huge East Texas Oil Field in 1930-1931, was president of Farrell & Co., oil operators and dealers in oil lands and leases, Farrell & Co. of Louisiana, and Farrell Drilling Co. Mr. Farrell also was the first mayor of Westover Hills when the town incorporated in 1937. The Farrell family resided in the house until 1946. The extremely large house, in the Norman-Tudor Period Revival style, has a complex linear plan parallel to Westover Road. The picturesque composition consists of a central, two and one-half story hipped block flanked by a hipped one and one-half story section on the north and a gabled section to the south of the same height. A square entry tower with flaring pyramidal roof dominated the front elevation. Clad in dark red pressed brick, the house exhibits limestone quoins and window and door surrounds and half timbering on the gable ends. Major alterations to the front of the house since 1930 include the addition of a south wing with an arched porte-cochere and of a dressed stone front portico in 1936; part of the south wing was demolished in 1969. Otherwise, the house is in excellent condition. Despite the alterations, the house appears eligible for the National Register for its significance as an architectural design, as a flagship house for the development, as well as for its associations with a figure in Fort Worth and Texas history.
