Kern Place was El Paso’s first garden suburban subdivision. Located at what was then the north end of N. Mesa Street, beyond the university, it was bordered by what became Billy Rogers Arroyo on the southeast and Crazy Cat Mountain in the Franklin Mountains on the east. Streets in Kern Place curve in alignment and frame Madeline Park and Alethea Park.
Houses in Kern Place span from the bungalow era of the 1910s to ranch houses of the 1950s. Among the notable houses are the Mediterranean-styled green-roofed R. M. Dudley House (1917, Gibson and Robertson), home of the president of the University of Texas at El Paso at 711 Cincinnati Avenue; the towered, Spanish-styled Gustavus A. Trost House (1923, Trost and Trost) at 1107 E. Baltimore Drive; and David Hilles’s first house in El Paso at 708 McKelligon Drive, built for Robert Massey in 1955, a flat-roofed, stonewalled, patio-centered modern house.