Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This December 1975 Classic takes us through the 18th-century Allbritton House, decorated for a Christmas celebration for the McCalls.
Christmas really started at Allbritton House back in June when Mary and Abner McCall moved in. That’s when their Baylor friends began sending gifts, often beloved family treasures, to take places of honor in the new home for Baylor University’s First Family.
Even the house — a fittingly stately design of historic red bricks and graceful white columns on the edge of campus at the head of “Faculty Row” and within walking distance of the president’s office in Pat Neff Hall — was a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Joe L. Allbritton of Houston and Washington, D.C. Allbritton is one of Baylor’s favorite sons and a close friend of President McCall.
In planning the house that would be home to them now and to all future Baylor presidents and their families, whether large or small, Mrs. McCall tried to anticipate any possible needs, from the most personal family situations to the most formal activities that are built in with the position.
From the flow of the downstairs area — with the elegant foyer, living room, dining room and formal family room shaping a splendid party traffic pattern — to the cozy, informal upstairs suite where grandparents, children and grandchildren can gather and drag out toys and cribs from the big storage closet, every occasion can be comfortably handled.
The 18th Century styling was chosen for its lasting beauty and rightness with the overall Baylor architecture. Mrs. McCall describes the house as “Georgian modified Southern Colonial with the portico and the columns.” An old transom from Burleson Hall is worked into the facade at the top in front. “Our architect-builder Joe B. Allen really got into the spirit of the project. His wife, Betty Fay, helped me at every step, from selecting hardware to scrubbing the brass chandelier,” she added.
“At my husband’s request, the trustees voted to call the house Allbritton House,” she said.
The house may be new, but the bricks it’s built with are true Baylor antiques. They were fired at the Waco brick kiln in the 1800s and used to build Maggie Houston Hall, which was originally a part of Waco University and later a Baylor men’s dormitory. When that dorm was torn down, the bricks were recycled to shape the Burleson annex which housed the dining hall. When the current restoration project on Burleson began, the annex was removed and the bricks, along with some from Harrington Hall, were tagged for the president’s house.
Many treasures from Burleson Hall are preserved throughout the new house. The giant, solid brass chandelier in the foyer once hung in that historic dorm, and the mantels in the living room and in President McCall’s study are also from Burleson.
Upstairs in what Mrs. McCall calls the “country bedroom” is a small-scaled dresser most antique collectors would clamor for. She explained its origin: “This old marble-top dresser was once in Burleson. Every girl had one. They were replaced when the dorm was redecorated in the 1940s. I found the base to this dresser in one attic and the frame for the mirror in another, and the carpenter put them together.”
The “country and the frame for the mirror in another, and the carpenter put them together.” The “country bedroom” is a favorite room for visiting children. “We have six children, together. You know, Abner and I merged two families — my two girls and his three girls and a son. (Both widowed, they married in 1970.) We have seven grandchildren. I wanted this part of the house to be comfortable and attractive. This is really the area for the children: they even have this back stairway that leads down into the pantry by the kitchen. After all, we do live here, so we have to be practical,” explained Baylor’s First Lady.
The feeling she has captured in the “country bedroom” is total charm. The kingsize headboard was constructed by combining the footboard and headboard of a homemade three-quarter Victorian bed. “Several of these pieces came out of my grandmother’s house, the one she had prior to the turn of the century — the mustache cup, the bowl and pitcher, the hand-painted coal oil lamp. This is the bedspread my grandmother made for me after she was seventy years old. I had never used it. I think the planked floor and the braided rug help introduce a very informal feeling here for the family’s sake,” she said.
Entering the small center bedroom upstairs, Mrs. McCall commented, “After having spent some time at Williamsburg, I decided I’d take this little nondescript bedroom out of the doldrums with paneling and paint, the little Dresden doorknobs, and 18th Century furniture. The Georgian light fixture was a gift from Mrs. Roy Chapman; it came from the McClendon home on Austin Avenue.” The piece de resistance is the colorful bed cover.
“This coverlet was made by the women at one of the Episcopal churches here, Church of the Holy Spirit. The women worked all year on it, and at Christmas they included it in their bazaar. They valued it at $300. Our builder said he couldn’t stand for it to be used just anywhere, so he bought it and at Christmas gave it to Abner and me for the house.” The work on the patchwork coverlet is of a religious theme, with many familiar quotes from the Bible.
Another friend, art collector Huffman Baines, a cousin of the late President Lyndon Baines Johnson, has taken an interest in the house and has supplied many of the fine paintings in it.
While she did not hire an interior designer, Mrs. McCall says she had a “lot of good help. A decorator in Dallas, the sister of one of our faculty members, helped me buy furniture. She took me to the Decorative Center. But I did not turn it over to anybody; I had to coordinate it. My challenge was to use what we already had and blend it with what we were able to buy, plus what people were nice enough to give us.”
Out of the budget, she made four important purchases that are permanently for Allbritton House: First, the Oriental rugs downstairs in the formal areas; second, the striking Louis XV style headboard for the master bedroom downstairs; third, a Baker reproduction Chippendale chest that goes in the VIP bedroom along with the fourth item, elegant four poster twin beds of 18th Century design.
The VIP bedroom is the most formal to the last detail, including authenticated dog-ear cornices showing the important 18th Century Chinese influence. Pointing out the special touches in the guest room, the lady who untiringly dedicated herself to the planning of the house said, “The nicest fabric in the house is in here. Now, in the master bedroom, I didn’t use such expensive fabric because the next president’s wife will probably want to change that immediately. But up here. I think she’ll want to keep this room like il is. I think it has a quiet elegance that will last a long time.”
A fine wallpaper of Audubon birds was her choice for one of the upstairs baths. She said she chose it so the grandchildren could enjoy it but President McCall calls it “Mary’s Bird Bath.” According to Mrs. McCall, when the house was in the planning stage and her husband kept hearing her talk about being true to 18th Century design, he asked her, “We are going to have bathrooms, aren’t we?”
One piece of furniture, a window bench in the living room, is very dear to Mary McCall: “That bench came out of the old Memorial Hall drawing room. 1 sat on it to have a picture made for the yearbook, feeling like a queen. 1 remember, 1 had a new black taffeta dress.
“I went over when they redid the drawing room and looked for the bench. When I couldn’t find it, I was devastated. The dorm mother told me it might be in the attic, and there it was, broken, but still there. So we took it home and had it reglued.”
Hanging on one dining room wall is a small, ornate silver tray. Mrs. McCall related the story behind the tray: “D. K. Martin, for whom Martin Hall is named, gave this silver tray to his wife on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It has been used many times, you can see, and you know she treasured it. She gave it to us, so it is now so special to me.”
Not all the stories are about items with a history. One gift is a shiny new “food center,” a built-in multi-purpose kitchen appliance. Mrs. McCall told of a visit she and President McCall made to the new East Texas home of one of his former law students. Buck Florence of Hughes Springs. She admired the Florences’ food center and, when asked, admitted they did not have one in their building budget. “Well, before we got home, a check was here waiting for us, from them, and a note saying they wanted to give a food center to the house.”
Many students walked past Alexander Hall for four years and never knew that inside that women’s dormitory Mrs. Catherine Alexander had a beautiful private apartment filled with 18th Century furnishings. Some of these Mrs. Auline Bailey, director of women’s housing, has loaned to the President’s home — cloisonne lamps, tables, a chair, small oriental rugs, and love seats.
Two black lacquer chinoiserie commodes flank the double front doors in the foyer of Allbritton I louse. Standing like a sentry watching over the commodes from Alexander Hall and the chandelier from Burleson is a handsome grandfather clock that Baylor President Emeritus Dr. W. R. White wanted in the house.
Mary McCall has taken her job as chief designer of the Baylor president’s home with devoted seriousness. As she related story after story, she wrapped it all with a big Christmas bow when she said, “All this is why I felt such a great responsibility, with all these people doing such wonderful things to be a part of the building of this house. So, it’s really not our house: it’s Baylor’s house.”
