{"id":460430,"date":"2026-02-10T16:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/460430\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T16:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:17:15","slug":"in-preston-hollow-a-hobbit-house-inspired-by-the-lord-of-the-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/460430\/","title":{"rendered":"In Preston Hollow, a hobbit house inspired by \u2018The Lord of the Rings\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are dragons in Preston Hollow. A hobbit house, too (though no hobbits) on a sequestered compound that brings a bit of J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Middle-earth to a corner of Dallas more accustomed to refined homes of aristocratic pretension. <\/p>\n

Step over a moat-spanning drawbridge and through a stone entry gate and you will be transported into a medieval fantasy, with secret rooms, trick mirrors, a full-size musk ox (don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s stuffed) and, of course, dragons. One greets you at the front door, breathing white smoke through flared nostrils. <\/p>\n

This magical world is the vision of Phyllis Glazer, 77, a sprightly woman of seemingly boundless energy for whom it has been a continuing project of more than two decades. What was originally conceived to be a thatch-roofed Irish cottage (modeled on a house in the John Wayne film The Quiet Man<\/a>) transformed into something far more ambitious after Glazer, who had never read any of Tolkien\u2019s epic tales, saw Peter Jackson\u2019s version of The Lord of the Rings<\/a> and decided to make her home in its quaint image.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an escape,\u201d she says of her building project, speaking from a dining room table long enough (it seats 18) to impress the wizard Gandalf. \u201cIt was a mythical place that ends up well, and that\u2019s what I needed \u2014 to live in a myth that ends well.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\"Phyllis<\/p>\n

Phyllis Glazer in the dining room of her home in Dallas. She wore flowers in her hair so that her late husband, who had Alzheimer’s disease, would remember who she was.<\/p>\n

Stewart F. House \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n

\u2018Let her do it, for God\u2019s sake\u2019<\/p>\n

When work began on the compound in the early 2000s, Glazer was recovering from a brain tumor and a prolonged environmental battle in the East Texas town of Winona, where she and her husband, Robert Glazer, had a sprawling ranch named for Mel Brooks\u2019 comic Western Blazing Saddles. <\/p>\n

Concerns about fumes emanating from a local hazardous-waste disposal site prompted her, in 1992, to form MOSES (Mothers Organized to Stop Environmental Sins). A bitter fight led to the plant\u2019s closure, in 1997, and made Glazer something of a celebrity, featured on NBC\u2019s Dateline and named one of Texas Monthly\u2019s 20 most influential figures<\/a> that year. The experience, however, was traumatic, leaving her emotionally scarred and fearing for her safety. For months, she traveled with a bodyguard.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I survive,\u201d she told her husband, \u201cI want to build a house and do it on my own. I\u2019ve got to have my own life.\u201d <\/p>\n

A free spirit, she bristled at being, in her words, a \u201cNorth Dallas housewife.\u201d The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she had grown up in Tucson and came to Dallas in 1977 as a 29-year-old divorc\u00e9e looking to reinvent herself. Her mother suggested she contact Glazer, a family acquaintance who ran a successful liquor-distribution business. <\/p>\n

She declined. \u201cCall some poor man who doesn\u2019t know me from Adam and say, \u2018I\u2019m here, I\u2019ve got two children and a parakeet, do something with me\u2019?\u201d she recalls telling her mother. \u201cI\u2019m not going to do any such thing.\u201d Eventually they met, and it was the match her mother had imagined. <\/p>\n

But convincing him to go ahead with the house project took some effort. He was initially \u201cterrified,\u201d according to Glazer, and only acceded after a psychiatrist friend advised him to trust her vision. \u201cYou can afford to let her do whatever she wants,\u201d the friend told him. \u201cLet her do it, for God\u2019s sake.\u201d <\/p>\n

He died of Alzheimer\u2019s disease in 2009, three years after moving in. What he had feared had become something he loved deeply. \u201cHe would call up one of his friends to come over and see it,\u201d says Glazer, \u201cand then he\u2019d be yelling, \u2018Phyllis, come explain what this is.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A hand-carved Smaug bed. <\/p>\n

Stewart F. House \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n

\u2018Sometimes we look back to look forward\u2019<\/p>\n

While the house was the product of Glazer\u2019s eccentric vision, she had professional help in its realization. \u201cThere were so many artists and artisans involved here,\u201d she says. \u201cThe most medieval thing about the house is its making.\u201d<\/p>\n

First among those was Dallas-based architect David Stocker<\/a>, who typically designs more modern homes but was intrigued by the prospect of going back in architectural time. \u201cSometimes we look back to look forward,\u201d he says. Working with Glazer, whom he describes as a \u201cfunky, beautiful personality,\u201d was its own reward. \u201cShe\u2019s just a whimsical, outside-the-box thinker.\u201d <\/p>\n

The house they designed blends elements from a variety of antique building types \u2014 barns, castles, church ruins \u2014 into a composition shaped like a giant crab, with pincer-like arms projecting out around a landscaped courtyard with a faux-bois fountain at its center. (Faux-bois is a technique of using concrete to look like wood.) Dallas permitters would not approve Glazer\u2019s desired thatched roof, so Stocker created an undulating slate roof punctured by antique-style chimney pots. \u201cThat\u2019s the closest thing to Disney there is,\u201d says Stocker. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The library has a hidden door in the fireplace. <\/p>\n

Stewart F. House \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n

Remarkably, a house that might have descended into kitschy pastiche never does. In part that is because of the pains taken to employ materials and methods authentic to the medieval period. <\/p>\n

Stone walls, for example, are laid without mortar, or dry stacked, in irregular patterns, with bits of sculpture and glass bottles inserted for character. (The bottles were an homage to the family\u2019s liquor business.) Stocker drew the plans for the stone by hand, rather than on a computer, so the design would appear more natural. <\/p>\n

Interior walls are roughly plastered and painted using historic standards. Iron door hinges, locks and pintles were forged by Ron Siebler<\/a>, the beloved Dallas do-everything building craftsman. Even the plumbing is antique. <\/p>\n

What ultimately keeps the house from feeling hokey or trite is Glazer\u2019s commitment to her all-encompassing taste. Its theme isn\u2019t so much \u201chobbit\u201d or \u201cMiddle-earth\u201d as it is \u201cPhyllis Glazer.\u201d <\/p>\n

To wit: there is hardly a space or surface free of some ornament or object, and much of that material is not medieval at all. Wooden floors are recycled from a 19th-century Heineken factory. The library is modeled on an Adirondack lodge. A kitchen table is the glass-topped face of a 19th-century Parisian clock tower set on the base of an antique, adjustable-height dentist\u2019s chair. (The clock, it should be noted, keeps computer-assisted time.) An adjacent pantry is animated by the door of a London delivery truck with faded signage that reads \u201cCooked Meats and Sausage.\u201d <\/p>\n

None of these things have any relation to Tolkien\u2019s fictional universe, but even if they are anachronistic, they reinforce Glazer\u2019s imaginative gestalt. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The cabin-style master bedroom. <\/p>\n

Stewart F. House \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s not hobbity enough\u2019<\/p>\n

Assembling this dizzying array of objects was a grand project, a mission on which Glazer was accompanied by interior designer Adrienne Morgan<\/a>, who was on Stocker\u2019s staff when the project began but founded her own firm soon after. For a time, Glazer was the firm\u2019s only client. \u201cHer project was so massive and time consuming that it kept us busy full time,\u201d Morgan says.<\/p>\n

Morgan and Glazer spent months traveling together through the United States, France, England, Scotland and Ireland, scouting antique fairs and dealers, flea markets, junk shops and old manor houses selling their patrimony.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked every day,\u201d Morgan recalls, \u201cfrom the beginning of the morning until night, looking and looking and looking.\u201d <\/p>\n

Glazer proved an exacting customer. \u201cI would find pieces to show her and she would reject them,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cShe would say, \u2018No, that\u2019s not whimsical enough,\u2019 or \u2018That\u2019s not hobbity enough.\u2019 She used the word hobbity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The glass conservatory. <\/p>\n

Stewart F. House \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n

The fruits of those trips are everywhere apparent in rooms that vary widely in their fidelity to Tolkien\u2019s narratives. <\/p>\n

The great room of the house, a space inspired by the forest city Caras Galadhon<\/a> in The Lord of the Rings, boasts a cathedral ceiling that soars 40 feet in the air and is crossed by branches, tree limbs and vines. Pin lights in the ceiling give the impression of the night sky. The study, meanwhile, has a charming mural, by artist Lynn McLain<\/a>, of the magical elvish valley of Rivendell. <\/p>\n

Shifting away from the Middle-earth aesthetic, the master bedroom is in the style of an Adirondack cabin, with a half-timbered ceiling, a stone fireplace topped with a driftwood lintel and his-and-hers four-poster beds. Why two beds? \u201cMy husband snored a lot,\u201d says Glazer. The library shares the bedroom\u2019s woody aesthetic, as do a pair of rooms accessed through a hidden door in its fireplace.<\/p>\n

The home\u2019s most enchanting room might be its glass-enclosed conservatory, a miniature forest dense with ferns and tropical plants selected by Glazer and landscape architect Rosa Finsley. Floating above is a stained-glass dragon mobile created by Siebler and artist Jeff Green. <\/p>\n

The conservatory opens out to a small woodland \u2014 call it Glazer Shire \u2014 bisected by a small creek. Crossing it, a stone path leads up a gentle incline to the Hobbit House, a cylindrical stone guest cottage with an oval door (painted green, of course) and round windows. Is Bilbo Baggins inside? No, but there are other attractions. A staircase winds up to a bunk room, or cell, set behind an iron prison gate once used at the French penal colony of Devil\u2019s Island. A level above is a larger guest room with a hand-carved bed that takes the form of Smaug<\/a>, Tolkien\u2019s treasure-hoarding dragon. Visitors can descend from that room to the ground floor on a slide that corkscrews around the central stair.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The green front door of the hobbit-styled guest cottage.<\/p>\n

Stewart F. House \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n

The architect Morris Lapidus<\/a>, designer of Miami\u2019s most flamboyant hotels, lived by the mantra that \u201ctoo much is never enough.\u201d While that philosophy may not be for everyone, it thankfully is for some people, and Phyllis Glazer is assuredly one of them. Dallas could use more such figures, if not more hobbit houses. <\/p>\n

It seems, however, the city is becoming ever more conventional, with cookie-cutter housing developments and overgrown homes that look like they were pulled from an upscale catalog. Earlier this year, the \u201cMushroom\u201d or \u201cSmurf\u201d house designed by Tom Workman<\/a> for a prominent corner in Highland Park, was torn down<\/a> for something that will surely be less inventive. <\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe we\u2019ll find a group of wealthy people who say, hey, we should do houses that are interesting and not just like every other house,\u201d says Stocker. \u201cThat would be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glazer\u2019s home, in its commitment to its idiosyncratic spirit, stands as a model for this kind of patronage. Just don\u2019t try to copy it. <\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Oak<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

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