Highland Park Armstrong Parkway Georgian — 1925 Restoration" loading="eager" / fetchpriority="high" decoding="async">Highland Park Armstrong Parkway Georgian — 1925 Restoration
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Title (60ch): Armstrong Parkway Georgian Restoration — 1925 Estate | TSE Meta Description (150ch): A 1925 Georgian estate on Armstrong Parkway with original carved-marble surround, restored mantel, and firebox returned to working condition.—
Highland Park Armstrong Parkway Georgian — 1925 Restoration
A Georgian estate, a marble surround, and a fireplace returned to use
Armstrong Parkway is one of Highland Park’s defining residential addresses, planned by Cook and Kessler in 1907 as a wide, planted boulevard with deep lots on either side. The houses built on the parkway in the 1920s and 1930s tend to be the more formal of the Park Cities inventory — full Georgian, full Neoclassical, occasional Tudor or French — and they tend to remain in long-tenured ownership.
The house in this case study is a 1925 Georgian on the parkway, currently in its third family. The principal-room fireplace had been original to the build, with a hand-carved marble surround and a substantial dentil-detailed mantel. The owners had been told, on purchase, that the fireplace had not been used in roughly two decades.
The work was a sympathetic restoration — clean what was original, repair what was failing, return the system to working condition without losing the patina of a hundred years.
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The problem
A carved-marble surround from 1925 has, by 2026, the kind of cumulative patina that defines a piece of architecture. Wax buildup, hairline lippage at returns, mineral deposits at the slip line, micro-staining from a century of household life. A modern restoration approach — strip and re-polish — would erase the patina and yield a marble that read as new, and therefore as wrong.
The right approach was conservation rather than restoration. Clean the surfaces with appropriate chemistry, stabilize the lippage where structural, leave the patina where it lived, and bring the surround back to a working condition of dignity rather than newness.
The mantel was a related question. The dentil work had been overpainted twice, but the carving was intact beneath. The mantel paint needed to come off without damaging the detail.
The firebox required a Level 2 inspection">Level 2 inspection, which produced a moderate scope — refractory replacement at two panels, smoke chamber parge to current code, and a stainless flue reline given the age of the clay liner.
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The work
Marble conservation. The surround was hand-cleaned with a marble-appropriate conservation cleaner, working in three-foot sections. Wax was lifted with a low-aggressive solvent appropriate to historic stone. Lippage at one return was stabilized with a reversible conservation epoxy and color-matched fill. The patina across the rest of the surround was preserved. Mantel stripping. Two coats of latex paint were removed from the mantel with a solvent gel and detail brushes. The dentil course required hand-cleaning with picks and small brushes to recover the carving. Beneath, the original wood was primed cypress in conservation condition. The mantel was repainted in a period-appropriate ivory satin, the same color it had been in the 1925 photographs the owners had been able to find. Firebox. Two refractory panels at the floor were replaced. Smoke chamber was parged to current code. The original cast-iron damper was extracted, derusted, lubricated, and reseated. Flue reline. A 304-stainless insulated liner was installed through the original clay flue. The clay tiles remained in place; the reline runs inside them. The cap was matched to the existing chimney profile in a stainless finish that reads dark against the brick. Gas conversion. The owners elected, after consultation, to convert the system to gas. We installed a sealed direct-vent firebox sized to the original opening, with a hand-built ceramic log set proportioned to a Georgian principal room. The remote was hidden in a side cabinet. Crown. The crown was scraped, repaired with a high-modulus sealant, and resealed. One mortar joint at the upper course was repointed in matching mortar.—
Materials
- Marble-appropriate conservation cleaner and reversible epoxy
- Period-appropriate ivory satin paint (mantel)
- Refractory panels, refractory mortar
- 304-stainless flue liner, insulated
- Sealed direct-vent gas firebox, hand-built log set
- High-modulus crown sealant
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Timeline
Seven weeks from contract to commissioning. Marble conservation took two weeks; mantel stripping and refinishing took two running parallel; firebox rebuild and reline took two; commissioning was the seventh.
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Outcome
The fireplace is in working condition for the first time since approximately 2005. The marble retains its patina and reads correctly to the period of the house. The mantel is in its original color. The Level 2 documentation produced at project close has been added to the household records and provided to the owners’ insurer.
The third family of this Armstrong Parkway estate has now used the fireplace through one full winter season. The next sale of the house will credit the work.
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Project credits
Contractor of record: Texas Service Experts Inspection and documentation: CSIA Certified, F.I.R.E. Certified Marble conservation: TSE in-house, with consultative input from a Dallas conservator—
Adjacent work
For other Highland Park and Park Cities work, see the Highland Park Tudor restoration, the University Park Georgian fireplace rebuild, or the Volk Estates traditional mantel redesign.
Return to the main portfolio index or read the Highland Park area page.
To discuss a comparable restoration, reach the design team at 214-444-8094.
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