When Jessica Chiles and Nima Baha laid eyes on their Austin stone cottage in Stevens Park Village, in 2012, Baha refused to set foot in the garage, let alone the bathroom. The house had been vacant for three years and was about to go into foreclosure. The carpets were stained; the lawn was unkempt. There was no central heat or air. But Jessica, a second-generation architect, could see potential in the large windows and abundance of natural light.
The couple had been living in the Design District while Baha was growing Scholastic Success, his boutique tutoring business, and Chiles was doing freelance work for Mitchell Garman. But during her last two years of architecture school at UT Austin, as part of an urban laboratory project, Chiles had worked with West Dallas developer Butch McGregor, who had projects from Trinity Groves all the way down Singleton Boulevard. She loved the vibrancy of West Dallas, which struck her as similar to East Austin, where she had lived in college and witnessed massive change. She saw the Dallas neighborhood heading in a similar direction, but even she was surprised when Baha, her Persian American husband, agreed to look at houses in the area.
“Part of that is due to the blind spots of being an immigrant,” Baha says. “Living in the suburbs—you go for the American Dream, bigger is better and all that stuff, as opposed to, What’s your true experience? What’s your lifestyle? What do you have access to?” He says his mom, who has an interior design background and raised him in Plano, never envisioned her son buying a rundown vacant house. “It’s a big source of pride for both of us that this person who has a very different vision of the American Dream now loves this place,” Baha says.
Initially they viewed the property as a starter home where they might stay for just a few years. But they fell in love with the historic neighborhood and are now working to get it designated as a conservation district. The original developer, Annie Stevens, was the daughter of Dr. John Stevens, one of Dallas’ first physicians. In 1851, he bought 168 acres of farmland, including what is now Stevens Park Golf Course, at auction. In the 1920s, Annie and her brother, Walter, built the golf course and began developing large homes around it. Then, in the 1940s, Annie developed a smaller tract farther west called Stevens Park Village. “She wanted a little neighborhood of starter homes for the sons and daughters of Stevens Park Estates,” Chiles says.
“There’s just a romance to the neighborhood in terms of the setbacks, in terms of the trees, in terms of the charm and humility of the homes, the scale,” Baha says. He likens the neighborhood to a suburban Brooklyn, especially now that most of the original homeowners have passed away and are being replaced by young families, who are returning the enclave to its raison d’être. A recent example: the couple’s new neighbors across the street have started hosting a music class on their lawn every Thursday. “All the parents come and have blankets set out for a picnic in the front yard, and they dance and read,” Chiles says. “I think their daughter is probably 2 or 3, and so this is their first real home for this new version of their family.”
For their part, Baha and Chiles are happy to stay indefinitely now that they are done with their latest renovation, which created separate work nooks for the couple and a hidden “vice room” with a hookah, mezcal bar, and vintage record setup where they can hang with friends. But Chiles is still tinkering. She has plans to expand the kitchen and enclose part of the patio to create a dining space. Meanwhile, the pair continues to add art and accessories from their world travels, which include recent trips to Mexico, Europe, and South Africa. “We’ve gotten rid of anything that was purely decorative that didn’t tell a story of an experience that we had together,” Chiles says.
There’s talk of one day moving to Mexico, but for now, Chiles’ design business, thckt, is thriving, with numerous remodel projects in Dallas and Houston. “I think when I was in school, I saw this glamour in my mind of doing new construction and big projects and working at a big firm,” she says. “And now, even for myself and my future home, there’s something I love about finding something old. Because you really can’t re-create that.”
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$395,000: Press-time listing for a nearby 1,200-square-foot 1941 stone house with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths on Lawndale Drive that has been recently renovated.
This story originally appeared in the July issue of D Magazine. Write to kathy.wise@dmagazine.com.
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