South of downtown along Sayles Boulevard and adjoining streets platted in the 1890s only became Abilene’s elite neighborhood in the boom years of the 1920s. Hattie McAlpine Sayles, widow of Henry Sayles, along with other investors subdivided large tracts, continuing the south-side city street grid with “The Boulevard” (now Sayles Boulevard) and small parks to establish the importance of landscaping in Abilene’s arid climate. The district is distinguished by its many large residences, some designed by prominent local architects. The house that lawyer Henry and Hattie Sayles built in 1889 at 642 Sayles Boulevard, then more than a mile beyond the city, is one of the oldest in Abilene. The one-and-a-half-story frame Queen Anne cottage has a gabled front with a horseshoe-shaped attic window, and the dormers and porches display considerable jigsaw and spindle work. The house was subsequently occupied by their son, John Sayles.
William J. Nichol and George F. Campbell designed the Henry Sayles Jr. House of 1925 at 740 Sayles Drive. It is inspired by English countryside houses with steeply pitched roofs, shuttered windows, half timbering, and an elaborate compound chimney. Sayles was active in the development of Abilene, with an estimated three thousand houses being built on Sayles family land. The house faces a block-long park that separates Sayles Drive from the parallel Sayles Boulevard.
Sharing the block with Henry Sayles Jr.’s house is a second Hattie and Henry Sayles House (c. 1895) at number 758, a two-story wooden residence that was southern colonialized in 1938 by Louis M. Caldwell for its second owner, Paul Jones. Next to the Sayles-Jones House at number 770 is the elegant, manorial brick-faced Bertha Sayles and Lillo S. Munger House (1923, H. B. Thomson).
After selling the family house at 758 Sayles Drive in 1929, Hattie Sayles, then a widow, moved into the flat-roofed, stucco-clad Mediterranean-influenced courtyard house of 1927 at 881 Highland Avenue. Spanish Colonial Revival architecture was not as popular in Abilene in the 1920s as in other affluent Texan neighborhoods. The house is similar to the Abilene Daily Reporter’s “Home Beautiful” demonstration house cooperatively built by the newspaper and the West Texas Utilities Company nearby at 1042 Highland (1923, David S. Castle Co.).
The Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest (1952, 1956, 1980; 602 Meander Street) is prominently sited on high ground. The elaborate Perpendicular Gothic Revival design by Washington, D.C.–based Philip H. Frohman, chief architect of the Washington National Cathedral for fifty years, is surfaced with rock-faced and polished Texas Lueders limestone. In recognition of its Texan location, Frohman described Heavenly Rest as “Spanishized English Gothic.” The 120-foot-high tower was completed in 1980, eight years after the architect’s death.