Amye Bozarth was one of few women builders in San Antonio. She said her gender helped her build “homes, not houses.” During a few years in the late 1920s, she was a leading builder of high-end residences in Olmos Park.
I live in a home that was reportedly built in the 1920s by Prassel Lumber. When we bought the house in 2000, my husband and I were told it was referred to as “Prassel’s Castle.” I am applying for a grant to help defray the cost of repairing and restoring the windows and tile on the tower, but I need to fill in the details of the history of the house. I am not sure where to look for the information, and I was wondering if you would point me in the right direction. The house is in Alamo Heights on Cloverleaf Avenue, and I believe it was built in 1927 for a family named Crenshaw. I am wondering if the first owner’s last name began with a C, because the wrought-iron panels in the dining and living rooms have what looks like two C’s back to back. I’d appreciate any insights.
— Nora Walker, M.D.
Your house was a recurring character, and even took a starring role in the San Antonio Light’s real estate section for several months in 1927, when it appeared frequently in advertising and advertorials. Its exuberant street-facing personality — cylindrical tower, peaked roofs, different-height masses with crenellations and windows of many shapes and sizes — and overall Spanish/Moorish swag made the papers again and again. An ad in the Light, Feb. 6, 1927, announcing an upcoming open house there, promised “a rare treat for lovers of beautiful homes.”
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The ad went on to describe some of its features. The exterior was stucco over Stone-Tile (tile over concrete); inside were a “beautiful marble entrance hall, large living room with fireplace and studio window, handsome dining room circular in form, breakfast room, kitchen, pantry, terrace, servants’ quarters, double garage, three bedrooms and two baths.” The house was staged by Stowers Furniture, including Persian rugs and maroon leather draperies. Buyers had the option of taking the house furnished or unfurnished. Landscaping was complete, with lawns, mature trees and flowering shrubs.
Yours was among the first of more than 20 houses built by Amye Bozarth, whose business slogan called them “Homes, not houses.” All those undertaken in her first years were high-end residences. She worked in partnership with F.L. Hillyer, whose company financed construction and sold building materials; and H.C. Thorman (discussed here May 14), developer of the Olmos Park neighborhoods where her first projects were sited.
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By the end of 1928, Bozarth’s ads referred to her “building program” for $1 million in residential construction. It was a time when real estate was a white-hot industry in San Antonio. Commercial construction was raising the skyline with buildings such as the Smith-Young Tower (now Tower Life Building), Medical Arts Building (now Emily Morgan Hotel), Milam Building, Nix Hospital and the former Express-News building. At the same time, suburban developers were extending residential boundaries in every direction and at every price point. In the late 1920s, you could buy a modest house for under $1,000 or a mansion on a hilltop for as much as you liked and could pay.
Bozarth’s were true dream houses, at the high end of the market, located for scenic views and prevailing breezes. Often referred to as one of the city’s foremost female builders, she turned her gender to an advantage, noting in her advertorials that “it is logical to believe that a woman, the natural homemaker, is best equipped to plan a home.”
A floor plan from Ayres & Ayres architecture firm shows the southeast elevation of the Amye Bozarth House on Devine Road. It was built as a model home, but the builder lived there and worked out of her home for several years.
While she worked with leading architects, including Atlee B. Ayres, Robert H.H. Hugman and John M. Marriott, she added her own touches to their plans “in the interest of homey atmosphere.” That included kitchens with “every modern convenience known to modern home construction,” baths for every bedroom, front and back porches, balconies inside and out, butler’s pantries, hall closets for wraps, conservatories for flowers, billiard rooms, sunrooms or libraries if that’s what the owner wanted.
Bozarth’s houses also boasted state-of-the-art tech for their time — ventilation fans, kitchen exhaust fans, water softeners, service bells and other “mechanical servants.”
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Despite her affinity for luxury, Bozarth hadn’t come from a wealthy background.
Born in 1884 in Denison to a Danish immigrant and his wife, Amye Johnson married George W. Bozarth at age 19. Widowed six years later, she couldn’t exactly go home again since her parents had divorced, remarried and relocated.
As Amye Bozarth, she turns up in the 1910 U.S. Census living with her mother, who kept a boarding house in Clovis, N.M., where Bozarth was working as a milliner. This was her first known profession, and it must have given her an eye for design as well as customer service skills. She then progressed from trimming hats at Foley’s department store in Houston in 1913 to a shop of her own in Dallas from 1914 through 1921. After an extensive trip to the Far East — Japan, China and Hong Kong, with a stop in the Philippines on her way back — she moved to San Antonio, where her sister Besse lived with her husband, an Army captain at Fort Sam Houston.
Bozarth first appears in the San Antonio city directories in 1924 — no occupation for the first few years, but she styles herself as “Mrs. Amye Bozarth (widow, G.W.),” and that’s the surname she kept during brief marriages to oil field worker Horace C. Thompson (1928-29) and purchasing agent S.R. McAlary (1929-30). Meanwhile, she was building her business identity. She made one of her model homes her residence as well as her office.
Known as the Amye Bozarth House, the mansion on Devine Road overlooked the Olmos Dam and future home of Olmos Basin Park. Designed by Ayres and completed in 1927, it also was in the Spanish style and had a tower on the street façade with circular stairs inside and a copper weathervane on top.
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“Completely asymmetrical, the house meandered through a series of 40-degree angles, numerous changes of wall planes, lively with a great variety of sizes and shapes of openings,” writes Robert James Coote in “The Eclectic Odyssey of Atlee B. Ayres, Architect,” provided by the Texana/Genealogy Room of the San Antonio Public Library. “Unusual for Ayres, there were purely decorative conceits,” Coote observed, such as semicircular arches, stucco grilles, dark wood shutters and balconies with flower-pot holders; a two-story living room with false beams and a circular window with amber glass — “a charming series of pleasant surprises.”
At one point in 1928, Bozarth had seven residential projects in various stages of completion. But with the onset of the Great Depression, the market for opulent houses dwindled. The high-flying builder joined the real estate firm of Richey & Casey as an agent specializing in North Side properties.
After she married a fourth time, to engineer Earl Van Guyther, she added his last name to become Amy Bozarth Guyther professionally, and the couple went into the home-construction business together, building smaller, less- grand houses in Terrell Hills and the Woodlawn area.
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Your house — advertised as “Designed and built by Amye Bozarth” — didn’t sell as fast as she probably needed it to, with several other projects in progress. First offered in February 1927, it hadn’t sold by July of that year, when it was advertised for sale by sealed bid, “a sensational opportunity to buy at your own price.”
Oilman George R. Eggleston; his wife, Ora; and their two daughters were the first family to live in the house, according to city directory listings. The Egglestons relocated to Houston in 1936, and attorney James W. Crenshaw and his wife, Eleanor, moved in the following year. The Crenshaws, who had no children, remained in the Cloverleaf house through his death in 1978.
As a solo practitioner who also headed investment and oil-royalty companies and married to a prominent clubwoman, Crenshaw and his wife might have taken to the idea of a double-C monogram at some time in their 40-plus years in the house. Its wrought-iron work was done by Theo. Voss, Artistic Scroll Metal Works Inc. (later Voss Metal Works), so the Chanel-like initials weren’t a maker’s mark.
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Bozarth’s advertising always emphasized quality materials and workmanship.
Asked to contribute to an “Amye Bozarth Homes Special Section,” Dick Prassel of Prassel Sash and Door (later Prassel Lumber) wrote a letter noting that “she purchases only high-grade millwork and settles (pays) right now.”
If anything, Prassel said, “Mrs. Bozarth is building too well. I tried to get her to use lighter studs and joists, but she insists on best.”
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Paula Allen writes about history for the Express-News.
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