Mansion Mystique

By the time the Burnses explored the house and grounds, the property had lost much of the confident grandeur of Clayton’s redesign. Yet the couple saw the house with practiced eyes. By 1996, they had already distinguished themselves among Texas preservationists for rescuing Galveston’s oldest home, the Menard House, which the Galveston Historical Foundation now operates as a museum.

That experience hooked them on preservation projects. Pat, who got the bug as a volunteer with the Historical Foundation, served as the president of the organization from 2000 to 2001. Fred, chairman and managing director of an insurance firm, found that the risk-management skills he had developed in the insurance business made him well-suited for overseeing exactly this kind of complex enterprise. But this project was not going to be another Menard House, a meticulously restored historical showplace. This house was meant to be lived in. “If you don’t make it a home,” says Fred, “it won’t endure.”

By any standard, the house is large, its 14,000 square feet distributed among three floors. “But you don’t really sense the scale until you stand alongside the exterior walls,” says Fred. And the way the house is sited, amid massive oaks and magnolias, diminishes any sense of hugeness. “It really didn’t sink in until I walked into the house,” says Fred. “It’s just the way it feels, its proportions, the way its rooms flow into one another.”

Fred, Pat, and Galveston architect David Barker were committed to honoring Clayton’s exterior plan, so they restored the portico detailing, re-created the stucco look, and leveled the porch floor, which had been pushed up by magnolia roots. In the basement of the carriage house, which had once been the stables, they found original tiles they used to replace damaged ones. Carefully replicating the lines of the 1889 remodel, the couple also added a breakfast room that looks out over the gardens.

Bringing the Hutchings Home back to life contributed to a restoration renaissance in Galveston. “It changed the complexion of the neighborhood completely,” says Fred, ticking off the homes that have been remodeled or sold at escalating prices. “If I had unlimited funds,” he says, “I would do an Operation Avenue O,” buying properties to fix up and sell to people with similar passions for preservation and community. “But it’s already happening by itself,” says Fred, “and that’s the best way.”

RESOURCES: Galveston Historical Foundation, 409/765-7834, www.galvestonhistory.org; Michel B. Menard House, 409/762-3933; contractor, TecCon Commercial Builders, 281/960-8499; National Trust for Historic Preservation, 800/315-6847, www.preservationnation.org.