(ROCKWALL, TX – March 2, 2017) Many of you have probably driven past the property known as Our House located just north of Rockwall’s historic downtown square. Owners Leslie Milder and her husband, Rockwall City Councilman Scott Milder, operate Our House as a memorable venue alternative where folks can hold birthday parties, baby and bridal showers, receptions, family reunions, graduation parties, weddings, business meetings and more.
But did you know that the building is over 100 years old and was home to only three different owners throughout its history?
Four years ago, Leslie and Scott decided to invest in some real estate in Rockwall. But not just any lot would do. As a former high school history teacher who describes history as “her first love,” Leslie said she wanted to invest in real estate that had some history to it.
“We wanted to make a real effort to be a part of our community, and to restore and maintain a little bit of that historical Rockwall for our kids as well as everybody else’s,” Leslie said.
For the past 10 years, the Milders had driven past the old house located at 803 North Goliad St. and had always been intrigued by the property. The home is located near West Heath Street, several blocks down from the former Life House coffee shop. One day as they were driving past, Leslie noticed a For Sale sign in the yard. “I’m like, that’s it, we have to go look,” Leslie said.
The couple met with a real estate agent and found out that no one had lived in the house for 30 years. During a tour of the building they saw the house was in disrepair, with holes in the floor going all the way to the dirt underneath. The house was sitting on some bois d’ arc stumps and had what Leslie described as a “terrible foundation” which made the house crooked.
To everyone else, the house might’ve appeared like a lost cause. But not to Leslie. “I’m walking through the house and I’m like, ‘Isn’t this amazing?!’ And my husband’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind – ‘What would we do with this?’ he asked. I told him, ‘I’m not exactly sure, but we need to buy it.’”
Leslie decided to conduct a little research on the house to learn more about its history. She pulled some old records from the county and found a newspaper article stating the home’s original owner was a pharmacist on the downtown square named Oscar Long, and that he bought the home in 1900. According to Leslie, the home appears on the tax rolls in 1903 and lists only three people as having owned the home in its entire existence – Oscar Long, Fannie Starr and Donnie Peoples.
Leslie said they met Donnie when they were ready to buy the home from him. “Donnie pulls up in his pickup truck and in his overalls, comes in and says, ‘All right, do we have a deal?’ We said yes and then we shook on it.”
Of course, “shaking on it” isn’t the legal way to purchase property nowadays, as Donnie and Leslie were playfully told by the real estate agent, although Leslie admitted she still appreciated the handshake. “It only felt fitting to shake on it when you’re buying a house that’s over 100 years old,” she laughed.
The Milders started what turned out to be an 18-month-long restoration project on the house about a year after they bought it. They started with the foundation, laying steel beams to make it more sturdy and taking out a few of the big bois d’ arc stumps. Leslie said she hopes to use the stumps in the landscaping someday to preserve some of the house’s architectural history.
The home’s large meeting space was once two separate rooms. The shiplap walls of the room are what was there originally, although they were covered in cardboard about the thickness of poster board and had been wallpapered over. Leslie said they kept some of the fragments of the original base boards when they took them a part.
“There was no electric or plumbing, so we had to remove the boards to run all of those things,” she said. “What our contractor did when he put the boards back on is he flipped them, so that side of the boards that had been on the inside and protected all those years is now on the outside.”
The organ found in the front room of the home is an antique heirloom belonging to a family that traveled from New York into Oklahoma territory many years ago, according to Leslie. The organ made the trip in a covered wagon. A Curio cabinet located in the front room is also original.
To abide by city code, the doorways of the home had to be altered to be handicap width. When the doors were removed, Leslie said she wanted to keep every original door that was in the home, as well as the transoms that were in the doorways. The original doors can be seen stacked on walls throughout the home.
Leslie said she wanted to retain as much of the original layout of the home as possible, but some modifications were necessary, such as adding a bathroom to the middle room of the house. “When we took part of that room for the bathroom, we had to enclose the side porch. It made me a little sad to have to alter it, but we had to do it to get some more space after adding the bathroom,” Leslie said.
The hardwood floors found throughout the home (except in the meeting area and the kitchen) were re-laid using the original floorboards. “When we pulled them up, we found that it went straight to the dirt and that there was no subflooring,” Leslie said. “So you can imagine how hot and how cold it would’ve been. We re-laid what was usable from those remaining hardwood floorboards.”
After months of hard work, the Milders managed to turn the home into a wonderful place for people to gather and celebrate any of life’s occasions, in a building that’s been a part of Rockwall history for over a century.
“This was a labor of love for us,” Leslie said. “We wanted to preserve it as much as we could, and open it in a way that people could come here and have their life celebrations in a place that’s a little piece of Rockwall history.”
For rental rates and more information about what Our House has to offer, visit ourhouserockwall.com.
Story and photos by Austin Wells, Blue Ribbon News. Photo of the Long homestead courtesy of Leslie Milder.
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