Fielder House
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Local landowner and community leader James Park Fielder (d. 1948) and his wife Mattie (Barnes) (d. 1950) erected this house in 1914, using steel lathing and other innovative techniques. The brick Prairie style structure had a large basement to provide storage space for the fruits and vegetables grown on surrounding acreage. Known as "The Home on the Hill," the Fielder residence was a popular gathering place and a landmark for citizens of Arlington. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1979
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Landowner and community leader James Park Fielder and his wife Mattie built this Prairie-style brick home in 1914, using then-innovative steel lathing and a large basement to store the fruits and vegetables grown on their surrounding acreage. Known affectionately as 'The Home on the Hill,' the Fielder residence became a beloved gathering place and a recognized landmark for the people of Arlington. The Recorded Texas Historic Landmark designation followed in 1979.
Why it matters
The house documents early-twentieth-century building innovation and the way a single prominent farmstead could serve as the social landmark of a growing North Texas town.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1914 Arlington was a small town set among farms and orchards, halfway between the growing cities of Dallas and Fort Worth. Its later identity as a big suburban city with stadiums and theme parks was decades away. Landowners still measured success in acres, and families grew much of their own food.
It was also an era of experimentation in American building. New materials and methods promised houses that were sturdier, more fire-resistant and more modern. Architects in the Midwest had developed the Prairie style, with low, horizontal lines and broad overhanging roofs, as a deliberately American alternative to ornate Victorian designs. Frank Lloyd Wright is its best-known champion.
World War I broke out in Europe the same year the Fielders built. Back home, though, most Texans were thinking about crops, roads and their growing towns.
People & events
James Park Fielder was a local landowner and community leader, and his wife Mattie (Barnes) Fielder was his partner in building one of Arlington's most memorable homes. In 1914 they put up a brick house in the Prairie style, which was still modern at the time, especially in a North Texas farm town.
The Fielders built with innovation in mind. They used steel lathing, a metal framework that holds plaster to walls, instead of the traditional wooden strips, along with other forward-looking techniques. They also built a large basement, unusual in Texas, to store the fruits and vegetables grown on the land around the house. The house was both a statement and a working farmstead.
It quickly became more than a family home. Known as "The Home on the Hill," it was a favorite gathering place and a landmark for the people of Arlington. James died in 1948 and Mattie in 1950. In 1979 the house was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
The Fielder House shows how national ideas about architecture and building technology reached into small-town America. The Prairie style was born in and around Chicago, yet here it stands in North Texas, adopted by a farming family who wanted a modern home. Steel lathing and a big storage basement reflect a practical, progressive mindset that was spreading across the country in the early 1900s.
The house also captures a social world that has largely vanished. Before suburbs, malls and freeways, a prominent family's home could serve as a town's informal community center, a place for visits, celebrations and news.
That makes the Fielder House a useful lens on the Dallas–Fort Worth region itself. It recalls the farm town that existed before one of the country's largest metropolitan areas grew up around it.
If you visit
Look for the strong horizontal lines that define the Prairie style: a low, wide profile and a sense that the house hugs its ground, here a gentle rise that earned it the name "The Home on the Hill." The brick construction and solid proportions are signs of a family that built to last.
As you take it in, imagine the setting in 1914. Today's busy streets were then fields and orchards, and the produce from that land ended up on shelves in the basement beneath your feet. Few places in Arlington connect the modern city so directly to its farming past.
Check locally before you go to find out whether the interior is open and when. A stop here makes a pleasant historical counterpoint to Arlington's big modern attractions, and it fits easily into any trip across the Dallas–Fort Worth area.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · James Park Fielder
- · Mattie Barnes Fielder
Themes & tags
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