It’s not easy caring for a 100-year-old mansion, especially one that was all but neglected for decades.
That is the task of the Oak Cliff Society of Fine Arts. The nonprofit ramped up its fundraising last year and collected $230,000 for Turner House, which paid for a new roof and eaves, porch and column repairs, restoring the porte-cochere and some interior repairs related to the roof leak.
Here’s what it looked like before.
See those green tiles? Workers had to take them all off to replace the roof and then put them all back on.
Turner House still needs about $426,000 worth of work, including replacing rotted wood and repainting the whole exterior, repairing doors, replacing some interior flooring, and reframing antique windows where the wood has rotted. The house also has a problem with poor drainage in the basement.
The fine arts society is amid another big fundraising push for those fixes. If you can’t give them a big chunk of change, there are other ways to help.
Buy a ticket for Rising Star 7. This is the group’s biggest annual fundraiser in which 14 galleries select local artists who they think deserve more attention. The artists get to keep all of the proceeds from anything they sell during the two-day show. Tickets to the event at 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14, cost $100, and a VIP reception at 6 p.m. costs $150.
This year the group landed Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger as the title sponsor for Rising Star.
Another way to help Turner House preservation efforts is to buy tickets to the Turner House salon series, which starts in October. The schedule isn’t out yet, but we hear that the group is expanding its horizons with salon series offerings this year. Top Ten Records, for example, has been invited to give a presentation on the history of rock ‘n’ roll in North Texas. Those salons only cost about $20, and they can be wildly informative/entertaining. We’ll let you know when the schedule is out.
Meanwhile, just look at these eaves.
