The Blue House

Preservation groups come together to rescue very old house in Dallas

The Browder house was visible to motorists driving on I-30.

In a big win for the preservation of cool old things, a historic home near downtown Dallas has been saved from destruction. Called the Rosenfield House, it's one of Dallas' oldest homes and became a cause celebre in 2016 after it was in danger of being destroyed.

But in a scenario that could hopefully be replayed in Dallas, a variety of players — Preservation Dallas, Dallas Heritage Village, the Cedars Neighborhood Association, Dallas Jewish Historical Society, and Charter Communications — worked together and found a place to move the house, less than a mile away.

Also known as the Browder House, the structure was a two-and-a-half story, Queen Anne-style house located at 423 Griffin St. W., that was built in 1885 for Max J. Rosenfield. (Flashback Dallas, the historical blog, details its early history.)

The lot where it sat was owned by Time Warner, now Charter Communications, who were told by the city of Dallas that they needed to build a parking lot to fulfill a zoning requirement. When its neighbors in the Cedars District noted that the building was going to be razed, they raised a ruckus.

For the next two years, neighbors, preservationists, and property owners worked together to keep it, says Katherine Seale, chair of the Landmark Commission.

"We've never had such a team effort with so many moving parts to save a landmark," Seale says. "It was a monumental effort."

Charter Communications, which owned the property, paid for the move.

"Charter is a huge company, and sometimes it can be difficult for a large corporation to be flexible and responsive — but they were," Seale says.

Seale acquired a lot for it at the corner of Browder and Beaumont streets in the Cedars district, across from the bar Lee Harvey's. Eventually, they found a like-minded developer in Mark Martinek, who is passionate about restoring old homes.

They moved the house in April, breaking the structure into sections and hauling it in the middle of the night to minimize impact on traffic.

It now sits next door to two century-old shotgun houses that have won preservation awards. "It'll help create a sense of an older neighborhood," Martinek says. "If the pressures of development arise, we'll have this historic enclave."

In its new location, it will be restored to its original glory.

Martinek, who is a resident in the Cedars district where he lives in another very old home, says that it was important to save, despite the upheaval of the move and the loss of some interior fittings.

"It's not an easy thing to do, but I think it's worth it," he says. "It's up there as one of the oldest houses in Dallas, and it's an interesting house given its history as being among the first spec houses they built over here."

The interior had already been gutted, so he'll rebuild to be historically accurate.

"I've been speaking with Davis Hawn Lumber about creating an example for the molding that we can use as our guide," he says. "One important thing is the windows. Unfortunately, someone took some of windows out, so we'll have to rebuild all of those in the original sash style they used in 1885.

"We'll just meticulously go through the lens of what would have been there in 1885 and that's what we'll put back," he says.

And while the exterior is in poor condition, it is at least intact.

"In 1885, everything was hand cut and nailed with square nails — it was perfectly well crafted," he says. "The wood is all old-growth Southern wood. The frame itself is magnificent. That in and of itself is worth saving. Then you have the Italian revival architecture which is cool. Some of what was there has not been well cared for, but the core is intact and we can definitely preserve that."

Martinek has been working on old houses for 25 years.

"I've saved houses in much worse condition," he says. "Each of those two shotguns were in worse shape. I just redid a house in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans that was falling down before Katrina.

"But a frame house is always repairable," he says. "It's expensive and it takes time, but having done it enough times, I have some economies in my approach."

That said, this is not likely to be a profitable venture.

"At this point we'll barely break even," he says. "But we'll save this house, and in the long term that is worth doing. The value is not exclusively in how many dollars it's worth. The value is in old houses."

Preservation in Dallas is a constant battle. "We have a long history of interesting architecture, but we don't appreciate what we have," he says. "We're destroying things that are an integral part of our culture."

Seale hopes that the house will serve not only as a touchstone for the neighborhood's heritage but as a potential model for other salvages in the future.

"Most developers are just taking advantage of what the city is allowing them to do," she says. "The Cedars neighborhood has lost so much of its built fabric that they recognize how important saving it is, and therefore approach things differently. The Cedars recognizes that what makes their neighborhood valuable is retaining their heritage."

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cattle concerns

Flesh-eating screwworm fly detected in Texas for first time since 1966

Photo courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife

This little fly can do a lot of damage

The New World screwworm fly has reached south Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed June 3, the first time in decades that the parasite with flesh-eating larvae has threatened the nation's cattle industry and only the third time it's appeared in the U.S. in that time.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the case was in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, about 50 miles from the Mexico border. Texas State Veterinarian Bud Dinges said he has established a 12-mile quarantine zone, prohibiting the movement of any warm-blooded animal — including pets — outside that zone without an inspection.

Rollins said there have been no other detections of the fly in the U.S., and officials were quick to say that while the fly’s larvae are a threat to livestock production, they don’t infest food. Properly treated, even the infested calf should recover, Rollins said.

Rollins, U.S. and Texas agriculture officials, and cattle industry leaders have been sounding public alarms about the fly’s movement across Mexico for more than a year, spurred on by memories of it causing tens of millions of dollars of losses — potentially billions in today’s dollars — before its eradication in the 1970s.

It is the first case confirmed in Texas since 1966, Rollins said.

The months of effort to keep the fly out of the U.S. have included dropping millions of sterile screwworm flies in the area to mate with wild females — the same method used successfully before the fly was eradicated. Rollins said the USDA is confident enough in its preparations that it believes “there is no threat of mass infestation.”

“There is no reason to believe this incursion will result in establishment of the pest in our country," Rollins said.

The announcement of the suspected case comes only a day after Rollins had an online news conference to highlight the nearness of the threat, with cases being confirmed in Mexico as close as 25 miles from the border — and to outline the USDA's efforts to combat it.

The New World Screwworm fly is a tropical species that decades ago infested cattle in warm weather across the southern United States, but it was contained in Panama until late in 2024.

The female fly lays its eggs in open wounds or mucous membranes and they hatch into larvae that eat flesh — making them unlike most fly species — and can infest livestock, wild mammals, household pets and even humans. Infestations can lead to death if left untreated.

In August 2025, federal health officials confirmed a case in a Maryland resident who had traveled to El Salvador, but the victim recovered and officials found no transmission of the parasite. Before that, the last outbreak was in the Florida Keys in September 2016, mostly among wild deer, and it was contained early the next year without spreading further.

The female flies mate once in their monthslong lives, and if they do so with a sterile fly, their eggs would not hatch — and the population would die out over time. Past eradication efforts were so successful that the U.S. shut down facilities for breeding sterile flies, leaving only one in Panama for decades.

That is changing. The USDA dedicated $21 million to convert a fruit-fly breeding facility in southern Mexico into one for breeding screwworm flies, opened a new center for dispersing sterile flies bred elsewhere in southern Texas and has started construction on a $750 million screwworm fly factory there. The breeding facility in Mexico should be operating next month, Rollins said.

Officials also deployed 8,000 fly traps along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Rollins said the USDA has tested more than 58,000 fly samples, along with 19,000 wild animals.

Rollins also closed the U.S.-Mexico border last year to livestock imports from Mexico, a decision she defended during her news conference Tuesday. The fly also can travel with people and their pets and with wild animals, officials noted, but Rollins stressed Wednesday evening that it doesn't fly great distances on its own.

Dinges said ranchers and pet owners need to understand that it's important to respect the quarantine zone.

“Please help us prevent any further movement of this pest by staying put,” he said.

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