This upper-middle-class residential district comprises a variety of turn-of-the-twentieth-century house styles. Some appear to have pattern book sources, and many are by John Grundy Garrett (1858–1919), a self-taught builder and architect, who moved to Gainesville from Mississippi in 1884. Over the next thirty years, he designed and built most of the houses here. The neighborhood is remarkably intact and, together with the adjacent courthouse square and city buildings, forms one of the best period ensembles in Texas.
The two-story frame house (c. 1885; 327 S. Dixon Street) built for cattleman Isaac Cloud has such Italianate details as the broad bracketed eaves and an offset lantern, indicating its early date. A major remodeling (1902–1908) added a full-height pedimented portico on Ionic piers.
Confederate veteran and cattleman Captain L. W. Lee built the 1894 house at 108 E. Church Street as a wedding gift for his daughter, Mrs. J. M. Potter. Simple in comparison with its neighbors, the L-plan house has Composite porch columns and a Palladian window. The picturesque one-and-a-half-story cottage at 102 E. Church features a Queen Anne corner tower with a conical roof, a spacious porch on square Tuscan columns, and elaborate stick work in the gables. The red brick foundation contrasts with the soft green colors of the wood siding and trim.
The First Presbyterian Church (1913: 401 S. Denton Street), organized in 1879, replaced its 1883 church with this Gothic Revival tawny brick building, with an Akron plan with radial seating. A massive, five-stage corner entrance tower dominates the complex composition of gables and towers. Across the street at 402 S. Denton, the Potter-Portman House (1894, J. G Garrett) is one of the most spectacular of Gainesville’s many late-nineteenth-century houses. The red brick house with its conical tower and wraparound porch is similar to George F. Barber’s Design No. 1, published in Cottage Souvenir No. 2 of 1891.
Built of Gainesville red brick, the two-story William and Anna Davis house (c. 1890; 505 S. Denton) has an irregular plan that rises to several cross gables, with curved timber ornamentation, and a wraparound porch with elaborate turned posts. William Davis was a lawyer who argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. At 604 S. Denton, J. G. Garrett designed the two-story house of 1898 for Mrs. Giles Houston. The red brick walls are accented by rock-faced stone stringcourses and lintels. A bold, three-story tower that anchors the corner is taller than comparable towers in Gainesville. A shallow pediment on the one-story porch marks the entrance, with a covered balcony above, and curved conical-roofed dormers emphasize the vertical composition.