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was married to the same woman, Faustine Lee, for 58 years. It was for Faustine and their (eventually) five children that he built their family house and called it Glennlee — a conflation of McCarthy's given name with his wife's family name. In 1935, 27-year-old McCarthy bought 10 acres on Brays Bayou at the edge of Houston, adjacent to the Braeswood subdivision. North Braeswood Boulevard then stopped at Kelving Drive, which ran along the east edge of McCarthy's tract. In 1937, he hired Houston architects Stayton Nunn and Milton McGinty to design his home, completed the following year. Reputed to cost $200,000, the house and an outbuilding containing servants' quarters, garages, and a stable and tack room were of steel-framed construction with concrete floor slabs — and central air- conditioning. Notwithstanding its modern infrastructure, McGinty's design was all Southern nostalgia. Double-height Tuscan columns supported a two-story, hipped-roof gallery that wrapped around three sides of the exterior. Framed by moss-draped live oak trees, Glennlee looked like a 19th- century Louisiana plantation. L.A. interior designer Robert Harrell — whose first Texan job had been designing the interiors of the immense house that Mrs. McCarthy's cousin, Mabel Lee Rothwell, built in Beaumont — produced the stylish but low-key (to judge by photos published in Architectural Digest) interiors. Harrell came into his own when he orchestrated the interiors of the Shamrock Hotel in what he described as the International Modern style. Glennlee joined a string of country houses that Houston businessmen built for their families on small estates along Brays Bayou beginning in the mid-1920s. Of these, only two — one built by Mayor Oscar F. Holcombe, the other by Mrs. McCarthy's uncle, oilman T.P. Lee, for Mrs. Evalyn Davis — survive. After the Second World War, Glennlee's isolation ended after Kirby Drive bridged Brays Bayou and North Braeswood Boulevard was extended through the McCarthys' Brays Bayou frontage. McCarthy's meteoric rise peaked in 1950, the year he made the cover of Time magazine. Thereafter, his business ventures began to fragment, and he was unable to meet his obligations. He forfeited control of the Shamrock in 1954. The McCarthys sold Glennlee to apartment developer Harold Glenn McCarthy and family at Glennlee, 7500 Kelving Dr., 1938 – 1972. Photo taken 1946. Detail of J. S. Cullinan House, 2 Remington Lane, 1918 – 1973. Photo taken 1972. Claud B. Hamill House, 2124 River Oaks Boulevard, 1939 – 2023. Photo taken 2021. J. S. Cullinan House, 2 Remington Lane, 1918 – 1973. Photo taken 1972. DMITRI KESSEL ANNE LEE PHILLIPS RICK GARDNER RICK GARDNER