In 1908, cotton magnate Sheppard W. King and his wife Bertha Wilcox went to Europe and came home with a vision. They wanted a house unlike anything in Dallas — something palatial, something European, something that would stop people cold. They traveled with their architect, collecting antique pieces and authentic fixtures from across the continent. When they built on Turtle Creek Boulevard, they built accordingly.
The result was a Mission Revival manor that became the social epicenter of Dallas almost immediately. President Franklin Roosevelt dined there. Tennessee Williams visited. The house was, as they say in that world, important.
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