It doesn’t look like a medical office, outside or in. The building is set back off East Lamberth in a cluster of trees, and if given only a passing glance, it could be mistaken for a residence. Just inside the front door is the old waiting room. It looks like what it is, or perhaps “was,” as no one uses it much anymore.
From the approaching drive off Gallagher Drive in Sherman, the complex looks like a series of pavilions linked one after another, each standing proud. Its elaborate composition may not be instantly meaningful to the passer-by, but upon touring the building one gains an understanding that this school, unlike many of its predecessors, has lofty intentions.
Give Philip Blander a black pencil, a white pencil, a sheet of gray paper, and he will take your breath away. The 59-year-old artist has done photorealistic portraits so lifelike he has people insisting that his work was not drawn. “One woman looked at a portrait I did and argued with me, telling me that it was a photograph! I love when that happens,” he said.
Summer vacation is over. School has started. Nikki Bitzer is back in the classroom. Life is good, really good. For this Sherman teacher, nothing sounds so sweet as the bell signaling the start of another class.
John Astin Perkins was born into a well-to-do, well-connected McKinney family in 1907. Educated at Yale, the University of Texas and the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, he moved to Dallas upon finishing his education and began to design and build houses.
When Jason and Daresa Sofey purchased the former W.S. Dorset family estate on Sherman’s North Preston Drive, they were committed to bringing the 1939 residence back to its former glory, and then some, but the project would have to be a rehabilitation, rather than a restoration.