October 2020’s Yard of the Month winners are Jason and Jessica Keenan of 2245 College Ave.

The Keenans purchased the home in 2007, after moving to Fort Worth from New York City with their oldest son. Since then, they were joined by a second son, and lived for a time in Austin, renting out the bungalow.  Through it all, they steadily worked to restore the home’s Craftsman lines as well as to maximize the potential of its small front yard.  The home had never had central heat or air when they installed an HVAC system, but featured multiple chimneys, which they retained, along with a butler’s pantry, buffet, bookcase and other built-ins described in a 1917 advertisement for the home (Fort Worth Star-Telegram).   When they wanted to replace mid-century wrought iron porch supports, Jason found a model for yoked wooden columns in a  Craftsman kit, and had them cut and installed by a carpenter friend of theirs.  Jason also installed a cedar arch, a bat house, and a French drain to prevent standing water from collecting in the back yard. They painted the house with Behr paint in “Whale Gray,” “Space Black” with a citrusy “Starfruit” accent on trim.   On the front porch, they flanked the door with gold papier-maché masks in the shape of a boar and a fox, a Halloween motif they hand-made in Austin years ago.  

2245 College was built in 1916.  It was offered for sale by the Cummings Realty Co. in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram repeatedly between 1916 and 1918, for $4675.  While the company’s 4 other homes on the East side of College Ave. moved quickly, 2245 sat empty for a few years.  Though there are no doubt others, the first recorded owner was Mrs. Nancy Sandidge (1871-1962), who purchased 2245 in 1929 as an investment property.  Mrs. Sandidge rented out the 7-room bungalow to tenants for several years.  She advertised the home as “expensively furnished” with a horsehair sofa set, iron beds in all three bedrooms and on the sleeping porch, a “Loyd Loom sunroom suite in fiber,” and a “100-lb Herrick refrigerator” stocked with ice weekly by her husband Claiborne “Clay” Sandidge (1862-1953) who owned Sandidge Ice Co. at the corner of Vine and El Paso streets (in the location currently occupied by Wild Acre Brewery and two distilleries) for over 40 years.

“The Iceman Cometh,” a 1929 delivery ad, and a Herrick fridge, 1929.

 Image credit: Remembered Summers, 2014.

Like many of Fort Worth’s pioneer families, the Sandidges were former Southerners heading West, looking to improve their fortunes after the Civil War. They hailed from the tiny farming community of Tyro, Tate County, Mississippi, which they left, separately, as young teenagers to join family who had settled in Fort Worth (US Census). Clay Sandidge’s mother, Nancy Elvira Sandidge (b. 1820), passed away in 1864, leaving 7 teenaged children and toddler Clay to be raised by his dad, farmer and merchant John Quincy Adams Sandidge (1817-1879).  Ten years later, John Q moved to Fort Worth with his oldest sons, John Wright and Thomas Richard, to go into banking, while his youngest boy remained behind in Tyro, living with relatives.  Two years later, on July 19, 1876, Clay rode into Fort Worth on the first train:  the No. 20, which was no more nor less than “an engine and 2 flat cars” (“Railroad’s Major Role”).   At a 1949 reenactment of that momentous event, Clay proudly recounted that he traveled the whole way — alone “at the age of 11!” – though, according to the census, he would have been 13 years and 9 months at the time (“Railroad’s Major Role”). Certainly, it was an exhilarating step for an adolescent boy, and a nail biter for local workmen, who rushed to lay the track fast enough for the train to roll into Fort Worth, a “sleepy town,” ready to be transformed into a “white hot” center of commerce (Daily Democrat, July 20, 1876).  Clay lived with his dad and new stepmom, widow Mary Brunner (1831-1900), while he finished his schooling in Fort Worth (US Census). After high school, he worked for a few years in Stephenville and Brady, apprenticing in various mercantile trades, before joining his brothers John Q and Thomas on the board of the City National Bank of Fort Worth. When the bank failed on April 5, 1895, Clay went into the ice business, which he had learned as an apprentice in Stephenville in the 1880’s (Austin Weekly Statesman).

Clay married Nancy Elvira Maxwell (1871-1962), ten days before her 16^th birthday, on July 15, 1887.  While they report that they met for the first time in Fort Worth, they are both from Tyro, which had a population of just 500; Nancy’s mother’s maiden name was Lucy Sandidge; and Clay’s mom shared his wife’s Christian names, Nancy Elvira, so they were likely cousins (US census).  The Sandidges were married 66 years, and had four children, 5 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren:  daughters Lucy Irene, b. 1889, Sarah Elvira, b. 1891, a still- born son John Maxwell Sandidge (1897) and Nancy Clay (1904-1978).

While renting out 2245 College, the Sandidges remained in their home at 1215 S. Henderson, opposite the Max Mehl numismatics shop, which they had purchased in 1915, after a typhus outbreak in Fort Worth had improved Clay’s fortunes, as a purveyor of safe water products.  1215 S. Henderson, a 1918 bungalow, no longer exists. Along with two other wooden bungalows in the 1200 block of Henderson, it was torn down c. 2016 to make way for a boutique hotel on land owned by Michael Dolabi (Kennedy). The 3-home lot has since featured a temporary “micro-park” and art installation, and now accommodates overflow parking for guests at Heim BBQ Restaurant on Magnolia. 

 In 1933, Mrs. Sandidge lost her tenant at 2245 College, no doubt due to the great Depression. By June 1933, she was auctioning the entire contents of the home Star-Telegram and searching for a tenant (Fort Worth Star Telegram).  Instead of renting it, though, she instead sold the 1215 Henderson St. property where she had lived for 20 years, and moved to College Ave. with her husband, eldest and youngest daughters, using the additional room to absorb older daughter Irene’s young family. Irene, along with husband Eagle Mobley, a grocery store bookkeeper, and children Anna and Phillip, lived at 2245 with their grandparents until 1939, when they moved nearby to 1823 Alston.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram is full of Clay Sandidge’s exploits, from 1889 to his obituary in 1953.  Even falling down an elevator shaft –he bragged he “broke only 1 leg and 1 shoulder” —  or walking 4 miles when summoned for jury duty merited an interview and a photo, as did his 40^th, 45^th, 50^th, 55^th, 60^th and 65^th wedding anniversaries! (Fort Worth Star-Telegram).  Most interviews feature ever-looser interpretations of his train ride into town, the marriage to Nancy, and his exploits as a volunteer fireman, fighting the Spring Palace blaze on May 30, 1890.  The Spring palace, erected in 1889 just north of the T & P Station, was an Orientalist vision with Moorish domes, mosaics and bays. The Palace was built in just 31 days by British architect Arthur Messer, and declared by financier B. B. Paddock to be “the most beautiful building on earth” (Holt, 107).  The “2-story wooden coliseum” hosted Fort Worth’s first exposition “a unique Karporama constructed of and featuring the products of Fort Worth, TX” (Holt, 106).  Sadly, the Spring Palace lost $23,000 in its first year of operation, and burned down in less than 30 minutes, one year and one day after it opened to the public (Holt, 107).

The Sandidge’s youngest daughter, Nancy Clay Sandidge, who also went by “Clay,” was considerably more reticent than her publicity-loving dad, but she was also a pioneer of sorts.  Clay was the first in her family to go to college, graduating with a BA in History from Baylor in 1926.  After college, she moved back in with her folks on Henderson, and then over on College, where she remained after their deaths. For many years, she took the 5¢ streetcar from Fairmount to Polytechnic High School on Beach, where she taught history, and sponsored the school paper. Streetcars were often painted the school colors of an institution on their route, so the car to TCU on University Ave. was purple and white while Poly’s was black and orange (“When Streetcars Roamed”).  But the streetcars stopped running in the late ‘30’s, and her commute became more arduous.  So when Daggett Middle School opened in 1945, Clay jumped at the chance to work closer to home, and switched from History to English.   Several long-time Fairmount residents remember diagramming sentences in her class in the 1950’s, some even calling it a “fond” memory.   When Clay, Jr. passed in 1978, the home was inherited by her nieces and nephew, Sarah Phillips, Ann Blake, and James Mobley (b. 1920).  

Nancy Clay Standidge, longtime owner and resident of 2245.  Photo credits from left to right, top:  Fort Worth High School portrait, 1922, Baylor College Yearbook, 1924, and Polytechnic Yearbook in 1945, when she was a History teacher.

It’s fitting that the Keenan’s home was owed for 40 years by an English and History teacher:  this October, their Halloween yard décor included tombstones Jason made from the remnants of the woodworking projects, which Jessica and the boys painted to memorialize great English women novelists:  gothic suspense writer Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), broody psychological thriller writer  Daphne DuMaurier (1907-1989), and satirist Jane Austen (1775-1817).   The headstones are clustered around the dominant feature in the garden, Jason’s cedar arbor, covered with Lady Bank’s yellow spray roses which have miraculously survived North Texas’ recent bout of rosette disease.  Other prominent plants include an agave, from Jessica’s grandfather’s garden.  One of their earliest plantings, orange gladiolas, bloom early in spring, along with early tulips.  In the parkway, they planted two oaks from the Fort Worth forestry program which have “changed the light conditions dramatically,” Jessica reports.  As the house faces West, they were roasted by the afternoon sun for years, and added bamboo screens to the porch to protect the home from in blazing summers.  Now, the oaks are fully established and growing tall.  Under their shade, variegated sweet potato vines (ipomea batata tricolor) in pretty mauve, burgundy and white provide ground cover. The vines are punctuated occasionally by Russian sage (Perovskia antriplicifolia), rosemary bushes, and a periwinkle butterfly bush.  In the same gothic palette, complementing the house’s dark colors, they have wine-colored oxalis, burgundy cosmos and a dusky-rose form of yarrow (achillea millefolium) throughout the front bed.   Matching the Starfruit paint accents, and the Lady Banks climbing rose, are euphorbia plants, commonly known as spurge, and South African bulbines (bulbine frutescens).

For their beautiful garden, and their commitment to restoring their historic Fairmount home, the Keenans have our thanks and a gift card to Ephemera on Magnolia Ave.

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WORKS CITED

“Auction Monday Night, 2245 College Ave.”  Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 05 June 1933. Print.

“Brady Ice Plant has Big Capacity.” Fort Worth Star Telegram. 4 Sep. 1910, p. 25. Print.

Calimbahin, Samantha. “Constructions Begin for Boutique Hotel in Near Southside.”  Fort Worth Magazine. 20 March 2018.  Web.

“Clay Sandidge and Bride of 50 Years Ago are Honored.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 16 June 1937. Print.

“Clay Sandidge, Pioneer in Ice and Banking Here, Dies.”  Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 28 Jan. 1953. Print.

“Fort Worth Bank Failure.” Austin Weekly Statesman. 5 April 1895.

“Four-Mile Jury Duty an Easy Trek for 76-year-old.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 13 June 1937. p. 21. Print.

Daily Democrat, July 20, 1876.

Duncan, Patricia. “Looking Back 120 Years at the Texas Spring Palace.” Archived at http://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/oldftw/SPsection1.jpg. Web.

“East Side Story: Incorporation and Annexation.” Hometown by Handlebar. 5 November 2018. Web.

“The Iceman Cometh, and Goeth, and Leaveth a Trail of Water on the Floor.” Remembered Summers. 2 March 2014.  Web.

“John Quincey Sandidge.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/38360182/john-q-sandidge. Web.

Kennedy, Bud. “New Hotel Planned for Magnolia Avenue, but not Everybody’s Happy.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 13 January, 2017.  Print.

Nichols, Mike.  Lost Fort Worth. Charleston:  The History Press, 2014.  Print. 

“Railroad’s Major Role in Building City Spot-lighted at Fiesta-cade.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 20 July 1949, p. 1.  Print.

“School Days at Hand.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 5 Aug. 1917.  Print.

“When Streetcars Roamed Fort Worth.” Fort Worth Magazine. 29 November, 2012. Print.  

Williams, Mack. “Spring Palace Blaze Recalled by Pioneer.”  Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 27 May 1951). Print.