OAK CLIFF ADVOCATE VOL. 17 NO. 4
PROFILE
10 Taylor Madison
DINING 14 3rd Place Commons FEATURES
6 Southern Dallas Progress
16 Design + DIY
26 Winnetka Heights home
28 Apprentice Creative Space
COLUMN
4 35 years of the Advocate
SPECIAL SECTION
20 Top Realtor
A cathedral-window quilt made by Sarah Gill’s maternal greatgrandmother that hangs in her dining room. Read more about her Winnetka Heights home on page 25. Photography by Lauren Allen.
Hello!
By JEHADU ABSHIRO
Did you hear? The Advocate is 35 years old.
For 27 years, our founder Rick Wamre wrote a monthly letter from the publisher. Then in our July 2018 edition, in a very fitting manner, our then-publisher Lisa Kresl wrote a column for our women’s edition. And the next month, Rick decided not to write another letter. Ever.
After 326 columns, perhaps you run out of things to say.
It’s been a while since that last letter from the publisher. Since then we’ve become a nonprofit and added Plano Magazine as a fifth magazine to go along with our four Dallas neighborhood publications.
Five years ago, Rick stepped down as Advocate president, was a part-time chief financial officer for a couple of years and then, a few years ago, he completely retired. If you’re wondering where Rick is, so are we. He might be at the Texas Rangers spring training camp in Arizona, or he could be touring Southeast Asia or cruising the Mediterranean or on a safari through Africa. I’m not exaggerating — he’s done all of those things during the past year or so.
Since July 2021, I’ve been president and editor-in-chief of Advocate Media. And I sincerely believe I’m at a time in my life when I should probably do a whole lot more listening than talking, hence the lack of letters from me. We did move offices after 29 years — same building, only four floors lower and still in one of the neighborhoods we cover — but we’ve tried to keep our focus the same as it always has been.
We’re still dedicated to neighborhood news. Those of us who work at the Advocate have always thought that news about street closures, alley trash, neighborhood schools and students, the interesting neighbor living down the street, the local organization that helps a niche need, and tidbits about our community’s quirks matter quite a bit. The little things are the sum of the whole, and no one else covers them in our neighborhoods like we do.
Because we’re actually your neighbors, that pothole bothers us, too. Caring about our neighborhood is the biggest reason we converted into a nonprofit publication. Sustainability and operational resilience are tricky in any business, but even moreso in a business like publishing that people have been saying is going out of business for the past 25 years.
So five years ago, we decided we’re going to keep covering neighborhood news in our print magazines and our online formats, but change our business structure to match our financial status. We became a nonprofit to give our readers (and neighbors) a better chance to help us, not only with story ideas, but also with donations from time to time.
We want to be here for another 35 years, and becoming a nonprofit is the best way we could think of to accomplish that goal.
Even after 35 years, when you pick up a copy of the Advocate or read our websites or email newsletters, we hope you continue learning something about our neighborhood and our neighbors. And hopefully yourself.
Because whether you’re one of our neighborhood advertisers, donors, vendors or readers, we’ll always be your neighbor.
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The Kessler Theater, located at 1230 W. Davis St. Photography by Lauren Allen.
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Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ
James McGee grew up in the Southern Grove area. Although his dad lived in Oak Cliff, he never heard about the history of Tenth Street until 2017.
Then, about three years ago, he was asked by Patricia Cox, the Tenth Street Neighborhood Association president, how he could come in and help out through his organization, Southern Dallas Progress Community Development Corporation.
As a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing communities and neighborhoods, Southern Dallas Progress serves as a vehicle for residents and businesses to make change. The group helps residents organize to identify and resolve community issues, helping to improve the neighborhood’s circumstances.
“Our focus is all southern Dallas, but through housing, small business. And then we also work to hold the banks accountable as far as what they do or don’t do on our side of town,” he says. “We’ve actively gotten more involved in development because with Tenth Street and all the other areas, there’s a lot of people. For Tenth Street specifically, there’s been a lot of great stories written on it, but there has not been a lot of dirt turn of people putting their money where their mouth is to help
McGee calls what Southern Dallas Progress is the opposite: a group that does put up some money and turns some dirt. When starting out his work in the district, McGee says it was important to get familiar with historic district qualifications, bringing out the Urban Land Institute to do a report on vision planning for the community.
“We’re just copying something that’s already over there,” he says. “We’re not going to create our own, and we may make the stuff centering a door … it’s still on the preservation side because we’re honoring everything as far as what’s outside and wood windows, things of that nature.”
In the spring of 2024, students from Texas A&M University’s landscape architecture department joined in on learning about the history.
“We’d take the rehab from the houses and kind of educate them as far from a historical, history standpoint, and a historical standpoint as far as it relates to rehab. And then recently, we were awarded another grant from the Texas Historical Commission to rehab the 102 North Cliff, which is the (only) commercial building right there on the corner,” he says. “We’re working with the City of Dallas to ask for the remaining funds to complete
that pool of money needed to finish. And we still have all the vacant lots, and we’re still looking for more vacant houses.”
Vacant houses are a priority when it comes to acquiring structures to rehabilitate due to the dangers that arise as the homeless population tries to seek shelter in the winter, McGee says.
“I wouldn’t call it arson. I would call it survival,” he says. “So we’re trying to work to acquire those first, and then after, we try to buy some of those vacant houses, then we’ll try to go back and start on some of the vacant lots.”
Currently, two properties are under rehab. For completed properties, 1102 Church St. is currently on the market, and 1023 Church St. is complete as well, just needing a fence built and is currently under contract. But these homes weren’t your typical fixer-upper flips. With historical registrations for both Dallas and national registries, certain materials and processes are required.
Rather than a quick trip to Home Depot for a window, you need to make specific wood windows. For a roof, you have to find a color that was originally there and then get approval for the paint colors.
One property had a chimney in historical photos, but when McGee bought the property, there was no chimney. Thus, a fake chimney was installed to meet the exterior requirements.
“Another thing, we have two big
windows in the bathroom right by the toilet, so stuff like that,” he says. “It’s hard to get around in construction because of the windows on the outside have to remain in their current position. … That’s just the nature of doing a historic house. Everything isn’t laid out planned because we actually change the entire configuration within the house. That’s for the layout, and the overall is you coordinate between historic preservation and what they want and the City of Dallas permitting and so forth, what they want.”
Since the new year, the only commercial building of the district, located at 102 N. Cliff St., has received a permit to begin construction but is waiting on the application for the State and Federal Historic Tax Credits to be completed. As of mid-March, the project is about 45 days away from receiving that approval. The building will keep a trio of two-bedroom apartments up top, with three small commercial rentals below.
“I get people (who) stop by all the time when I’m out there. A lot of people went to it as the grocery store and then there’s things where they kind of remember going there as a child,” he says. “They just tell me various stories about each thing that was there and how they went there. Sometimes it was a gambling place, at one point in time the grocer; it’s actually been an upholstery store, so it’s been various things.”
The two small houses beside 102 N. Cliff St., located at the 108 N. Cliff Lot 3 and 4, are expected to be completed within the year. For 112 N. Cliff St., the property is currently going through the Landmark Approval process with goals to schedule future meetings with the city to help make new projects possible.
Another project Southern Dallas Progress is looking to be involved with is a proposed trail from Tenth Street to Betterton Circle, including a street that’s been unpaved by the city for a century. The project was pitched by bcWORKSHOP but has been at a slowdown.
“I think internally, they haven’t had this sort of request before because it’s an unpaved street,” he says. “Nobody ever knew it was there, per se, because you drive just thinking it’s another vacant lot.”
The trail proposal is waiting on the city to research the internal process and conduct a legal review, since it would need to transfer from the Department of Transportation and Public Works to Parks and Recreation.
“Overall it’s just a lot of vacant parts, a lot of vacant houses. How do we come together and do more,” he says, “and then welcome people in that want to do more as far as the right thing (for the historic district).”
A living space in the Le Sol House. Sometimes artists’ talks are hosted by the fireplace.
First in 2019, he did a concert in her backhouse. Through a mutual friend, he asked to come back, so Kidd Springs neighbor Taylor Madison hosted a few more gatherings with him performing that were never open to the public. Then, in 2021, it was a backyard concert. Madison speaks fondly of that night. She calls that gathering a house party, just friends of a friend who came out.
“That moment in Oak Cliff history will go down as, like, you just can’t make something like that up. You can’t pay for it. Sometimes there’s a creative energy that happens and a momentum of community,” she says.
Those nights with Leon Bridges are part of what has inspired her to open her home to more
than just her closest friends. Her get-togethers grew and grew, and with that growth, Madison says she wanted to create something that was more sustainable.
“I hosted a lot of community events and out of my own pocket, whether it was just getting a lot of creatives together to put on something fun, and I love doing that. But there was also … I wanted something more from my career,” Madison says.
That something became Le Sol, a membership-based club that officially launched in 2023 with the aim to build “a global community through curated experiences,” both locally in Dallas and around the world. “Inspired by art, travel and meaningful connection,” according to the website.
Originally from North Texas, Madison graduated early at 17, followed a “rodeo guy”
she was dating on a move out to a horse farm in Mississippi and later attended the University of Mississippi. After graduation, she participated in Teach for America.
“I went to business school, and then right before I was about to graduate, I was like, ‘I really love kids, and I want to do something meaningful,’” she says. “So I taught kindergarten for two years in Nashville through that program.”
She later moved back home to reconnect with her Texas roots and stayed in education, working with a private family foundation and later Dallas ISD to develop reading programs.
“I was really trying to make an impact on education … but at the end of the day, I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’” Madison says. “It breaks your soul a little bit. It did for me anyways. Working in public school, I had 25 kids each year, no assistant. It’s just a hard system.”
That’s when Madison decided to pivot to the travel business, starting a blog known as “The Simple Sol” and becoming a travel agent in 2014. As she continued to work in the travel world, a lot of her work entailed developing honeymoon trips for her clients, and she created her former members-only travel club Sol Society at the end of 2018. These experiences are what have shaped today’s Le Sol.
“I still do it (work in travel), but the hospitality aspect of being exposed to all that has definitely informed Le Sol,” she says. “We are a hospitality company, and I love creating experiences for people. I love hospitality. I love service, and I also love bringing inspiration and ideas from other cultures and infusing it back to my neighborhood, which I think is the whole point about travel. You can travel, but what are you doing in your own neighborhood and what are you bringing back, and how are you putting that in?”
Traveling a lot with her career made it hard to find her own Dallas community.
“I tried out all the classes and was hoping to maybe meet somebody in the locker room or changing, but I never met anybody there,” she says. “Like, nobody wanted to chat and hang out, so I was like, ‘How do you meet people?’”
At that time, local businesses Beatnik Fine Goods and Tribal All Day Cafe recently opened, and Madison discovered that those owners all went to Ole Miss like her. She took that connection as an opportunity.
“I went to Lindsey at Beatnik and said, ‘Hey, I want to host some friends over here. I want to have this party. I know this musician, he can sing on his guitar. I want to have a moon circle, but I don’t have anyone to invite,’” Madison says. “She’s like, ‘Oh, I can invite some people for you.’ And that’s slowly kind of how that started.”
Before the pandemic, Madison was regularly hosting at her first Kidd Springs home, now known as the Le Sol House, a three-bedroom, two-bath, complete with front porch and backhouse.
She had been inviting friends for gatherings, such as hosting private, free yoga classes in the renovated backhouse, and pre-trip or post-trip parties for travelers from her group trips. These gatherings were not hosted as a part of today’s membership-club, rather just inviting people over. Those were the people that gave her home the nickname “Sol House.”
Today, each room of Le Sol House offers a different vibe with seating for members to use at their leisure. The kitchen has a cafe menu, and the living room includes rotating art. Madison says that she has always been inspired by France and French culture with particularly Le Sol House showcasing that.
When COVID-19 hit, Madison spent that time renovating, building the garden, acquiring some chickens and fully redoing the backhouse, which serves as a wellness studio. The space hosts yoga classes, rising rituals and
sound baths. These were opportunities she hosted for friends at her home to enjoy free of charge before launching the membership model.
Le Sol is meant to be a third space, not a concert or event venue.
Madison says she hosted one wedding prior to the official membership launch, just as a favor to friends.
“They reached out to me during COVID and said, ‘Hey we’re engaged. We’ve looked everywhere, we’re thinking about Florida. Is there any way you would let us get married in your backyard?” she says. “Again, I still lived here. And in 2021, they got married in the backyard. We are not a wedding venue. We don’t advertise as a wedding venue. I did this as a personal favor to friends.”
The goal of Le Sol is to not only continue to bring people together, but also bring places together.
“People will take a yoga class, then maybe hang out and work, or meet friends for coffee, so the idea is that there’s not everything so separate,” Madison says. “That’s what I was feeling when I moved to Dallas, and besides wanting to make community, it was like you drive here to go to yoga. You have to drive here to go to your coffee shop, then you have to drive here to go meet friends, and this is a place where you can kind of get a one-stop shop.”
She has since expanded those gathering spaces into a second Kidd Springs home, known as Château Le Sol, which sits just across the street. Château has three-bedrooms and three-baths complete with a bamboo forest, pool, a garage artist studio that hosts a rotating resident artist, a wrap-around balcony and a basement that runs the length of the house with remnants suspected to be from the prohibition era, such as peepholes and bottles.
Madison says she saw the house sit on the market for a long time, eventually buying it with the intention to revamp the property in a way that preserves what it is. She adds that the previous owner seemed to be a hoarder.
“She had like 15 animals living in here, and we just came in, and
really cleaned it up,” she says. “We tried to restore it. … The walls are all concrete. And what’s also special about both these properties is the springs runs through both of the properties.”
Château specifically still has the well visible in the center of the garage. While running her business out of her homes, Madison says she has a great relationship with her direct neighbors.
“But then, the outside noise of non-neighbors, like, I just have to kind of put my blinders on and do what I know is right and with good intention, and that’s Le Sol,” she says.
That “outside noise” comes from those who don’t approve of her home-based social club.
A March 2025 Facebook post from Rob Shearer states his opinion of Le Sol plainly: “For over a year, the Kidd Springs Neighborhood Association has worked to address the blatant zoning and code violations at Le Sol House — a business operating illegally out of two residential homes in our neighborhood.”
That post was sparked by a planned, but later canceled, meet and greet with District 1 Council member Chad West during his reelection campaign. In December 2025, the Dallas Observer reported that the City had launched an investigation into the club for code violations.
Madison speaks frankly about the situation, mentioning that from the beginning, she always knew she was going to get a Specific Use Permit for Le Sol. She thinks once she finally acquires that “it’ll be smoother sailing.”
“I have to be very strategic of how to protect this place and how to protect the neighborhood and the homes in the neighborhood, and knowing that when Leon started coming, there’s always been a plan in place of what does this look like,” she says. “But that meant being really strategic about who I let dictate if this was good or bad for the city. Sometimes (to) change, you have to go and be in front of things, and you have to take a risk.”
3rd Place Commons is an Oak Cliff-born dining experience
Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ
Along-running communal table. A candlelit tablescape with formal place settings. A set with a live DJ. It’s a different type of dinner.
Though this dinner is not at a restaurant. 3rd Place Commons is a “collective community experience,” truly born out of passion.
“We’ve been running loosely, I would call it a supper club, but really just dinners out of our houses for anyone and everyone for years because Richard’s a chef and we love hosting,” Beckley Club Estates neighbor Renata Lannen says.
Couple Richard and Renata Lannen started serving the public in a more official capacity last April through a model that came together following the birth of their first son.
“We had lived here for a while and met a bunch of people and gotten sort of ingrained, but when our son was born, we were really looking for more community,” Richard says. (“Outside of just work and day care,” Renata adds.) “We’re like, ‘Oh, well, if we can just do what we’ve been doing at home with other people, we’ll be able to find that community.’”
3rd Place Commons’ multicourse meal is served in different iterations through their three main series — Supper at Sundown, Howdy Commons and Out of Office. Every meal is different, but each meal is served family-style.
“We have one seating. It’s all synchronous. Everybody eats together, everybody drinks together. The courses come out together. You all have discussion questions,” Renata says. “The point is truly to engage across the table. So it’s not a restaurant, and it’s not catering. It’s this other thing.”
“We want it to be an experience,” Richard says.
As a chef with 15 years in the dining industry, some of those years including Dallas’ Sur La Table and Eataly, Richard uses the opportunity of 3rd Place Commons to experiment in the kitchen. There’s roughly a six-month to year-long menu planning process, with tickets releasing even before the menu is public. The collective reaches out to local farmers to see what’s growing and what’s in season as they design what ends up on the plate, with one to two meals each month.
Folks involved in the nuts and bolts of operations, from servers to photographers, are friends of the couple who started out as volunteers and are now paid. But 3rd Place
Commons is not the couple’s full-time gig. “It’s just a labor of love, really,” Renata says.
Locations are chosen based on partnerships, which also gives attendees an opportunity to explore a local third place.
Elmwood Farms served as the first location of their dining experience and is the location of the Supper at Sundown series, which has their next supper slated for April 4.
“There’s so few legitimate third places in this city. I think the farm is slept on, and we love it so much, more people need to know that it’s here,” Renata says.
Howdy Commons is in partnership with Wayward Coffee. Typically, the dinner runs out of the Davis Street location. Howdy Commons began this year at the coffee shop’s Design District location. Often, the food takes on a “Tex-talian” style.
“Italian cooking is in my background. Texas-style cooking is where I grew up, so being able to bring both of those together is really fun for me, too,” Richard says.
Renata adds that her family is Italian and Richard’s family is sixth generation Texan, so the fusion also represents their roots as a couple.
The first iteration of Howdy Commons this year included starters of cappelletti in brodo with caramelized leek filling, followed by a fennel and grapefruit salad covered, but not soaked, in a vinaigrette. The main course served a confit beef cheek with coffee polenta and wild mushrooms. The vegetarian version had a confit portobello heart. Finally, dessert brought out an olive oil cake with meringue frosting, plus bitter, yet sweet amarena cherries paired with a Wayward seasonal coffee. Wine throughout the three courses was selected by Lucky Draw Wine Club.
Their latest series, Out of Office, is a nomadic experience that pops up across Dallas.
Tickets for the upcoming dinners range from $78 per person, depending on the series and alcoholic or nonalcoholic pairing selected. Ultimately, 3rd Place Commons is about more than just the price tag.
“It’s truly supposed to be more of what’s a collective of friends and a collective of businesses that we want other people to linger longer at and find their people,” Renata says, “find their space that feels more comfortable to them.”
“The point is truly to engage across the table.
So it’s not a restaurant, and it’s not catering. It’s this other thing.”
How this century-old Kessler Park home expanded over 1,000 square feet
Before Jessica Maros worked in interior design, the Vancouver native was part of a Nashville-based band. Her time in Escondido led to national tours and the group’s music was featured in NBC’s This Is Us and HBO’s Girls.
And as that chapter of her life started coming to a close, she began working more in home design along with founding her studio Maros Designs in 2018. She later moved to Los Angeles, where she worked with HGTV star and interior designer Leanne Ford. Maros relocated to Dallas just before the pandemic with her husband Stephen Marley.
“When Steve and I met, we were looking for homes, and I always said, ‘If I’m ever going to move to Dallas, I want to live in Oak Cliff,’” she says. “Because every time we came out here, I was like, ‘This is so my vibe, my people.’ I love it.”
Their 1924 Kessler Park American-style home came with charm, but also with major updates. There were rooms without any lighting and damage from a winter storm. The home originally stood with 2,000 square feet, but has been updated to include 1,300 additional square footage, expanding the living space, primary and adding in a bathroom.
And of course, she added her own design touches to bring in calming tones, making the home “Zen and meditative,”
which has led to accolades specifically for the new primary bathroom from Paper City Dallas and LUXE Interiors + Design’s annual RED Awards. The primary bathroom has white Daltile mosaic flooring that matches the same black version of the powder room downstairs. The walls are covered with microcement, except for the toilet room, which has paint that mimics wallpaper. The shower includes front-facing windows, so she added waterproof curtains to allow for more natural light in the space.
Downstairs, the kitchen, living and dining rooms have been rearranged, adding on more living space and a mudroom to the front entryway. Despite so many new additions, many aspects come from the original home.
“We used a lot of the remaining pieces that were existing in the home, and we just kind of moved them and shifted everything,” Maros says.
All original doors and doorknobs were kept. The original red oak floors were bleached twice to get a lighter finish. Old pine was found under the exterior bricks, salvaged from the garbage and re-stained to include on the ceiling of the kitchen and mudroom.
“At first I was going to have a white ceiling, and I’m glad I didn’t do that because the wood’s just so beautiful, but old
pine generally goes red,” she says. “So when they first put a coat, it was bright dark red. And I’m like, ‘Hell no.’”
An additional two rounds of bleach landed the pine at a deeper brown. Then, the window frames were bleached and stained until Maros found the right shade to match. The hearth of the dining room was also kept.
“Originally, when I took off, there was a bunch of beepboarding and stuff on the fireplace. I took it off in hopes that there would be this incredible thing underneath. And it was brick, and the brick was gorgeous, but I couldn’t,” she says. “We tried to strip it down. It just was so much work, and it was looking kind of dingy, so we ended up just microcementing over the fireplace. I love the material. It’s durable, and it breathes well, and it’s great for bathrooms.”
Replica arches were also recreated from the original design for the new configuration of the home.
In terms of decoration, art and DIY are staples throughout.
In the primary bedroom, the hanging Arterior chandelier has additional fabric thrown over it to make it look more interesting, Maros says. Another DIY is the custom frames she made that hang along the staircase wall, simply adding notches to the edges. She also painted the piece that hangs above the primary suite bed with water and dye.
“I love painting, I do it for fun and for just pure joy,” she says. “I don’t consider myself an artist. I just do it for the colors.”
Even with her music industry days behind her, there are still pieces of her past career found in the home: from a guitar and vinyl room to the two black and white paintings of musicians by an unknown artist. Other works of original art include pick-ups from the Nashville flea market, watercolor art of women done by a friend’s mother, and her husband’s great uncle’s paintings that date back to the 1900s.
There are some parts of the home that ended up a little different from what Maros envisioned, but she enjoys them all the same. As a house within a conservation district, there were certain rules she had to follow when it came to the final exterior. To add on to the backhouse, she went through a yearlong process of approval from the City.
“I was OK with it because I didn’t ever want to change the fascia. However, the paint color. I really, I wanted it black. And I wasn’t allowed to have black, so I was looking for the next darkest color,” she says. “And, I found this dark green, and I’m like, sold. So sometimes those limitations, I believe, are really good because it allows you to just view things a little differently, change your perspective, and kind of change things up, and those things are sometimes good.”
The Advocate’s annual Top Realtor special section recognizes the Top 5% of all active neighborhood Realtors, determined by reported sales volume.*
MELISSA O’BRIEN
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
JASON SAUCEDO
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
THANI BURKE
Compass Real Estate Texas, LLC
DAVID GRIFFIN
David Griffin & Company
KATHY HEWITT
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EMILY RUTH CANNON
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ANN ANDREWS
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ROBERT KUCHARSKI
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BARBARA ALVARADO
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JAMIE ASHBY
Allie Beth Allman & Associates
YULIA BURT
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ELIAS CANALES
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GIANNA CERULLO
Compass Real Estate Texas, LLC
BRIAN CHESMAN
Keller Williams Dallas Midtown
CHRISTOPHER COLE
Compass Real Estate Texas, LLC
BRIAN DAVIS
Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s Int’l
GED DIPPREY
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JASON GRAVES
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JENNI STOLARSKI
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MOHAMMED JABER
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ALEXANDRA BRADY
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ROGER LOPEZ
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CHRISTIE CANNON
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DECARLA ANDERSON
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TAMMY DIAMOND
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TY DUNCAN
Duncan Real Estate Co.
JOSEPH FELLING
Coldwell Banker Realty
BETTY FISH
Dewbrew Realty, Inc
KEN HARRELL
Weichert, REALTORS - The Legac
JULIE LINDSEY
The Michael Group
LAURA LOPEZ
Eco Agent Realty International
CJ MCELRATH
eXp Realty LLC
CYNTHIA GUEL
CENTURY 21 Judge Fite Co.
EUGENE GONZALEZ
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
KENT FREDERICK
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
LESTON EUSTACHE
Bray Real Estate Group- Dallas
CHRIS BRUMFIELD
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
LAURA WISWALL
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
JAMES FAIRCHILD
Ebby Halliday, Realtors
TAYLOR BURDEN
Compass Real Estate Texas, LLC
NICK MCMAYON
Compass Real Estate Texas, LLC
SUSAN MELNICK
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
JEFFREY MITCHELL
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LUCAS READER
Ray O’Connor III, Broker
ANDREW REX
David Griffin & Company
LAURA SALVIE
Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate
ALBANY SHAW
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ANDRE SHAW
Andre Shaw
TARYN SHERMAN
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Compass Real Estate Texas, LLC
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Ultima Real Estate
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“My whole family is still here, and they all live in Oak Cliff,” she says. “My parents are a mile away in one direction. My brother and his family are a mile away. And I have a nephew, who’s 3-and-a-half, so it was nice to move back right after he was born.”
Her 1922 Winnetka Heights Craftsman sits in the middle. The home includes a preserved historical floor plan, keeping the middle corridor of the home layout in a loop for the two-bedroom, two-bath that’s filled with golden yellows and cream as nice compliments to the warm wooden details of the original doors, butler’s pantry, pine floors and window trims.
Gill previously worked in London and India as an architect, exploring different places through the opportunities that came. In India, she worked for a former University of Texas at Austin professor.
“It was a time when there was a lot of construction, and things moved very fast,” she says. “And then after grad school (at Yale), I moved to London to work for a firm called Heatherwick Studio, which does a lot of really unusual and interesting work. My dad is British, so although he has lived in Texas for 40 years, 45 years, it was nice. It was nice to spend time there and in a
culture that was familiar and had lots of interesting opportunities.”
Today, Gill works as a project manager for large design and construction projects, often with nonprofits.
Gill began the house search casually for a year, then seriously for a couple of months before finding her Oak Cliff home, she says.
“I knew I wanted an old house,” Gill says. “I knew I wanted a house that had a lot of the original features and that hadn’t been renovated by someone else. Didn’t want to go renovate and undo work someone else had done. I wanted just a house that had character, that had strong identifying features, whatever those would be.”
When her realtor sent a single photo of the original brick fireplace with the wooden built-ins before it was formally listed, she says she was pretty sure this was going to be the house for her.
“This one, because it had not just original woodwork that was unpainted, and the original layout, it just kind of had preserved all of that was still in reasonably good condition for not having had a significant renovation.”
For being a century old, the home had only 4-5 owners to her knowledge, with that last couple – Jan and Alyssa – being beloved neighbors of the community for about 40 years.
The significant renovations came quickly after her
purchase in order to make the home her own. She says she really did things out of order, picking up pieces she liked along the way without a “big grand plan.”
“I definitely bought that tile and the sink, all of which was custom, before having a plan,” Gill says. “But I think I just have a strong enough color palette in general that I really just bought things that I liked and trusted they would all work together.”
The yellow tile lines the sitting area at the back of the primary bedroom, going from the right floor; as you enter the quaint master bath, it climbs up the walls to surround the single sink and shower. There’s a brief addition just in front of the sink to add some extra storage.
“At some point, I just decided, ‘No, I’ll add in a little bit of storage there.’ Kind of eating into the space. Mostly to build in a little bit more storage, but create a little bit more buffer between the bathroom and the rest of the room. Just so you have a transitional space and couldn’t see straight in. That is the only real layout change.”
In terms of art in the home, the largest piece hangs in the dining room.
“My mother’s grandmother grew up in Lubbock, and she had like 10 or 11 children. And so she made quilts for each one of her children and all of her grandchildren. I have no idea how many grandchildren she had,” she says. “So my mother still has the quilt that was made for her, which it’s the same pattern and the colors were different … based on the fabric, it looks like it’s from the ’50s and ’60s, so I’m not positive, honestly. And I took it from my mother. At some point, I had it in California with me, and I’d hung it there, and it was the first thing I hung in here once I’d done the really messy floor refinishing and sanding the walls and stuff.”
Gill herself also works on fiber arts projects, with embroided canvases and framed works throughout her home. She picked up the art form during her time in India, after discovering a tiny shop with “every single color of embroidery thread you could imagine.”
“Having a home and feeling settled has made me want to do it even more for some reason,” she says. “I enjoy being in the house. Doing something that is methodical and time-consuming in a home that feels like a forever home. That sense (of) permanence makes you, makes me at least, want to create, spend more time doing that.”
Although this house is planned to be hers forever, she does not think it is done just yet.
“I imagine I’ll never be done,” she says. “I imagine I’ll always find something that I want to do. I’ve not bought tons of furniture, so I think I’ll also slowly buy pieces that fill the house up and give it character over time.”
Apprentice Creative Space bridges the gap through the nonprofit’s accessible literary space
Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ | Photography by YUVIE STYLES
Coworking spaces are popping up everywhere as the new office for those who work from home, but tend to venture outside the house to do so. Some of Oak Cliff’s coworking spots (Switchyards, E-Creative Space and FLOCC) all sit within a two-minute drive. However, accessibility to those spaces can be difficult.
That struggle is what Apprentice Creative Space was designed to fill. Founded by Kaitlin Siebert and her partner Steven Monacelli, Apprentice is a nonprofit that aims to bridge “the gap between emerging talent and established creatives” by providing a literary, third space to bring everyone together.
“There’s not really a need to compete as much as there’s a need to create spaces that can be catalysts for everybody to do more,” Monacelli says, “and to collaborate and to meet each other in situations that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to engage in.”
The idea for Apprentice came out of necessity, Siebert says. The couple grew tired of both working together within their home. At the time, Siebert was finishing up a master’s in library science and Monacelli works from home as a freelance journalist.
“We wanted (a workspace) to exist that
maybe wasn’t a coffee shop, where we had to pay money to be there, and maybe wasn’t a coworking space because that wasn’t really something we could afford at the time,” she says. “It seemed like a lot of coworking spaces that were available were pretty expensive. And for somebody that was still in school and somebody who’s doing freelance work, that’s not always the most attainable option.”
In between her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Siebert – who is an artist – submitted work to the Oak Cliff Art Walk that was held at the Oak Cliff Assembly building, a 17,000-square-foot Dallas Historical Landmark that formally housed Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church. There, she connected with Proxy Properties, who was renovating the building into 23 private studios and a theater venue, about the space opening up. That unit now houses Apprentice.
“We saw the opportunity to get (in); we didn’t think we could find a space like this anywhere else, especially if it was an existing landlord who would probably be uninterested in renting out a space to a brand-new nonprofit,” Monacelli says.
He also noted the events in the literary and creative arts scene couldn’t always
Magazines and books are available for members to bring back and forth at their leisure.
accommodate the needs, whether it be the cost to rent a space was out of reach or the number of people would outnumber the capacity.
Danielle “Dani” Amassa-Gana, director of operations for Apprentice, met the founders in 2020 through trying to educate Dallas about community needs. Amassa-Gana is the community organizer for Say It With Your Chest DTX, a mutual aid group that runs local care package parties to put together resources for houseless neighbors and coordinates volunteers to distribute them.
The space Say It With Your Chest DTX previously used was a friend’s garage to host the packing parties. When that was no longer available, a direct message from the couple brought Amassa-Gana the opportunity to start hosting at Apprentice Creative Space.
“One of the biggest issues as an organizer that I always run into when I want to host an event and really gather community together is to find a space that is suitable for our needs,” she says. “And Apprentice just fit perfectly into what we needed. The amount of space is great because our care package parties have grown to have over 50 people now, and even if we were to still have that garage space, we still wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand of all the people who want to help and support the cause.”
Amassa-Gana was then brought on to work with Apprentice in handling the coordination of the space, from memberships to event rental.
“I will say, from an organizing perspective, I do think that what Apprentice is doing is what more creative workspaces should be doing,” she says. “If we really want to put our money where our mouth is, you should be using some of the profits that you make from coworking to subsidize and support people who may not have access or not be able to afford what you need. … I do hope that eventually more spaces also push toward accessibility.”
A majority of the events are open to the public and free to attend unless otherwise stated on their website. The membership options range in cost,
from $300 per month for a 24/7 private office to the daytime flex plan that is $25 per month to access Apprentice for up to 10 days per month from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. There is also the co-op plan that grants 24/7 access for 10 days per month by giving back to the space through volunteering four hours a month.
“Having that flexibility and really focusing on, ‘How can we cultivate a community in Dallas that has so many voices in it, that it feels diverse, and it feels welcoming, and it feels inclusive, and it feels safe?’” Amassa-Gana says.
Within their suite at the Oak Cliff Assembly, Apprentice Creative Space provides a wall of donated books (including some from past author talks held in the space), two private offices that host the nonprofits Urban Arts Center and Four Palaces Publishing, a conference room and an array of tables, couches and chairs.
There are a variety of recurring events housed in Apprentice, including the Care Package Parties. There’s Apprentice First Fridays, a networking event that includes a different theme and collaboration within the community. Additionally, Apprentice hosts the weekly service of the congregation formerly housed in the building, Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church, every Sunday.
Future plans for the nonprofit third space include adding podcasting equipment, developing the kitchen to include free coffee and a communal microwave, providing additional printing equipment and utilizing the recently donated projector to host film screenings.
“We’re definitely growing and maintaining the community that has been built, like the foundation has been laid, and now we’re able to stack on top of that. More people are hearing about us. We get a lot of emails every day, forms. I’m sending out contracts and stuff, and it’s just really wild, but it’s great, and I’m really happy for y’all,” Amassa-Gana says to Siebert and Monacelli. “And I’m happy for Apprentice and just the community as a whole. We’ve needed this for so long.”
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