Boy Scout reinvigorates Swiss Avenue home conservatory

When the grand mansion at Swiss Avenue was completed in 1917, a gift from a Panhandle rancher to a bride 21 years his junior, it bore the earmarks of Americas Gilded Age. Both its size 7,000 square feet and 17 rooms and its details sweeping mahogany staircase, walnut paneling, inlaid marble flooring, carved swags and garlands, slate-covered roof were wordless but powerful indicators of William Jenks Lewis wealth.

In addition to the grand living room, morning room, sunroom and dance floor, the French Renaissance residence also boasted a conservatory to keep a year-round supply of hothouse flowers in bloom for urns and vases.

The mansion will be featured in the Swiss Avenue Historic Districts annual home tour Saturday and Sunday.

The young Willie Newbury Lewis, a Dallas native, socialite and former debutante, considered 5500 Swiss Ave. ostentatious, according to her 1984 autobiography, Willie, a Girl From a Town Called Dallas. Therefore, the beautiful mansion, which earned Dallas, Texas and national landmark designations, was sold in 1921.

Now known as the Aldredge House, for 41 years it has served as headquarters for the Dallas County Medical Society Alliance. Rena Munger Aldredge gave the house to the group after living there with her husband, banker George N. Aldredge, for 50 years. Mrs. Aldredge was known for her stunning table settings that celebrated the seasons and the accomplishments of friends and family. Renas Gospel of Beauty, written by granddaughter Betsy Slater Dudley and published in 2012, describes the civic leaders ways with flowers.

Although the grounds and mansion have been well-tended by the alliance, without a flower lover in residence for so many decades the conservatorys plants withered away. Except for a very large magenta bougainvillea and a very old philodendron with trunks as fat and winding as a well-fed python, little remains of a tropical paradise. A final, major blow came in June 2012, when a monster hailstorm passed directly over the Swiss Avenue Historic District. The curved-glass panels were reduced to shards.

Eventually, the conservatory glass was replaced, but the botanical material still looked dreary. Refurbishing the glass rooms interiors, thought longtime auxiliary member Sarah Hardin, would make an ideal Eagle Scout project for her son, Spencer, 18.

A senior at Highland Park High School, Spencer has been involved in Scouting since kindergarten. And for at least as long, he has helped his father, Mark Hardin, with gardening chores, even if it was no more than following Dad around the yard with a child-size wheelbarrow.

My dad likes gardening, so I kinda got that from him, Spencer says. It kinda runs in our family.

I win big awards in horticulture at the Marian Scruggs Garden Club, says Spencers mother, who also enters the flower-arranging categories in the annual show. But Mark is the wonderful gardener.

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Boy Scout reinvigorates Swiss Avenue home conservatory