Thomas Scott Miller Jr., one of the original developers of Winnetka Heights built the house in 1912. The Stemmons house, behind it, has since been torn down. Photo courtesy of Diane Sherman.
The T.S. Miller home at 101 N. Montclair at Jefferson is one of two original Winnetka Heights mansions still standing – the other is Turner House.
The three-story house soon will be home to City Councilman Scott Griggs, his wife, Mariana, and their baby, Catalina. The Griggses bought the historic house last week.
They’re moving from their house in Stevens Park, which also has some history — it was built by Vernon Singleton, the Dallas County Commissioner for whom the West Dallas boulevard is named.
Mariana Griggs says she wasn’t aware of the Miller home’s historical significance at first.
“It’s not like we were looking for something with history, but it just kind of happened, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” she says.
The family needed another room with the addition of the baby, and a larger home in Stevens Park would’ve been too expensive, she says.
“The price per square foot in our neighborhood is just going up so fast,” she says.
Stevens Park is where the Griggses first became involved in civic life, first with the Stevens Park Neighborhood Association and Bike Friendly Oak Cliff, then the Fort Worth Avenue Development Group and now City Hall.
photo courtesy of Diane Sherman
The Miller house is an American prairie foursquare with Italianate influences, comprising 5,300 square feet on a little more than half an acre. Miller positioned the home so that passengers on the Interurban railway, which once ran down Jefferson, could admire it. The Miller family didn’t live there very long, and house was converted to apartments in the 1940s. Neighborhood residents Cindy and Paul Maute won a Preservation Dallas award for restoring it in the 2000s.
“It’s a very distinctive house, and it should go to a very distinctive family,” says real estate agent Diane Sherman of David Griffin and Co., a longtime Winnetka Heights resident, who listed the house. “We haven’t had a councilperson from Winnetka Heights since I can remember.”
