Hunt Co., TX - News: Mrs. Esther Smith Yard of Month Honor ********************************************************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb by: Sarah Swindell USGenWeb Archives. Copyright. All rights reserved http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ********************************************************** Mrs. Esther Smith Given Yard of the Month Honor Mrs. Esther Smith received the yard of the month designation by the Thursday Club civic committee. Actually the award could be for the year since every month the yard, house, and grounds are in perfect order. The place is the original home of the J. A. Taylors, which he built shortly after Celeste was platted in 1887. A hitching post bearing Mr. Taylor's name, the insignia of the Masonic Lodge, and a date still stands. The figures represent 1888 or 1898. Time has worn one digit until it is questionable. Harley Blankenship helped the contractor and remembers that Mr. Taylor was persistent that floors be laid with such care so that workmen were minus shoes while the work progressed. Mrs. Smith, with the assistance of her son and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Ray Elam, has restored the house to the original beauty. Mrs. Smith has stripped all the fine grained woods, entrance doors, inside baseboards, facings, doors and other trims, then finished by rubbing with oils until the wood is a satiny gleam. The walls are repapered in patterns fitting the type of architecture and the use of the rooms. All floors are heavily carpeted in tones complementing the walls. Modern furnishings are in the room-sized entry, the stately dining room, and living room. Mrs. Smith's bedroom is beauty in choice for the furniture of the Hazal family life-time residents of this area was selected. The traditional washstand, small center table, dresser, and bedstead with seven-foot high headboard are restored to their original oak surface. This room is in tones of rose, the living room in gold, and the dining room in green. A small bedroom is also downstairs. The kitchen is ultra modern in utility, but in keeping with the whole in woods chosen. A large glassed-in room for living was added to the back. Mrs. Smith said that no porch, only back steps formerly were the outlet from the rear kitchen. The baths are tiled. The upper floor is one large room with the alcoves used for semi- private half-bed sleeping. The paper in this area is nostalgic in design for the days that the home was built. Most interesting are the run around narrow L-shaped storage rooms and bath fittings between the main room and roof. These were original and restored. Catalpa trees as old as the house, no doubt, still grace the front. Mrs. Smith loves the wide leaves for "they are easy to pick up and don't damage the Saint Augustine grass," she explained. Much care has gone into the laying of wide concrete drive to the triple garage in the rear, a garage unlike the typical one, for the small decorative windows above the door give distinction to the back yard that is dotted with younger trees and more colorful foliage in the fall. All last summer annuals in bright colors were in beds flanking the drive. A show piece almost all summer and fall was a rose bush. The large pinkish- yellow roses graced the front banister, as it had since the planting long before the house restoration of these several years began. It possibly could have been originally there at the turn of the century. A beautiful home awaits the Elam family when time for retirements comes. Many hours of blue print plans and their diligence have gone into it. Mrs. Smith is at her home there resting from her almost forty years of work in public life in this town. Another of the very few homes from Celeste historic beginning is now restored for posterity. (December 13, 1974, The Celeste Courier)