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In the dining room, vintage woven fixture from Give and Take in the Design District. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX In the living room, custom horn benches, Roll & Hill Modo chandelier. According to the Dallas Morning News, the four homeowners dubbed it the "lake compound" (April 27, 1952). This name did not stick, however, because a little later, folklorist J. Frank Dobie, another good friend, is said to have retorted, "I can't call this piddlin' swamp a lake. You fellows are so educated, I'm calling it Culture Gulch." Swank's design for the $17,000 Bearden house, completed in 1951, was a runner-up in the residential category of the Architecture, 1951 competition, which was sponsored by the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, with winners' plans exhibited in the Dallas Museum of Art in October and November 1951. It was also featured in Living For Young Homemakers magazine in January 1952 and the Dallas Morning News on March 29, 1953. Erika and Matt Yeaman in the parlor. Bearden's house was the only one of the four that doesn't actually face the pond, but it was originally connected to the water by an elaborate series of paths fitted into the site by Lambert. When the Beardens applied to the FHA for a loan guarantee, the officer turned them down, saying that he had never seen "a roof like that in Dallas." Through a sympathetic mortgage broker, they finally applied to an insurance company instead of a bank for the construction loan. Fast forward to late 2009, when Erika and Matt Yeaman settled in Dallas after several years in New York, where Erika studied interior design at Parsons and Matt worked in banking. After honing her eye at Parsons, Erika was not going to settle for any old house. She wanted a place with clean lines and a sharp profile softened by the patina of time — something only a 1950s modern house can offer. Unfortunately, these are a somewhat dear commodity in Dallas today, as their modestly sized floor plans and big lots often doom them to knock-down heaven. But Erika was undeterred. Because of school districts, however, the young family was only seriously looking within the genteel confines of the Park Cities, an area that has a lower percentage of modern as compared to, say, Kessler Park or East Dallas. After fruitlessly searching, they stumbled upon Culture Gulch, where Maria Tinkle and Fran Bearden still occupied their old houses. Even though Matt had grown up just a few blocks away, he had never noticed the small modern houses tucked into their rustic setting around the pond. Erika was intrigued and began to ask about them. Soon she discovered the details about the JANUARY | PAGE 17 | 2014 unusual history of the compound, which she calls a "little treasure to discover." She knew Fran Bearden's house was the house for her own family. It took some doing, but they managed to convince her to sell in the summer of 2010. Shortly afterwards, they began to remodel, and Erika's budding design firm, Moser Yeaman, took on the project. In just a few short years, Erika and her partner, Brooke Moser, have designed the interiors for the Henderson Avenue bar and restaurant Alma and the upscale lounge Dram, as well as the multi-family development projects Light Farms (a masterplanned community in Celina, Texas) and Bandera, which is now breaking ground north of Highland Park on Hillcrest. The Culture Gulch house, while suitable for the modest needs of family life circa