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72 found all these books and original auction catalogs on Wingerworth." The hall, along with its oak drawing room, was carried out by one of the most prolific and noted architects and master builders of the era, Francis Smith of Warwick. Smith had also worked on aspects of Chatsworth House, the legendary residence of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, just 15 miles away from Wingerworth. In the 1920s and '30s, about the time Wingerworth was demolished, wealthy Americans were snapping up salvaged rooms for their newly built houses. Few rivaled the consumption of such archi- tectural specimens as William Randolph Hearst. The flamboyant newspaper pub- lisher dispatched agents across Great Brit- ain to acquire hundreds of ancient rooms to be installed at Hearst Castle, his hilltop mansion in San Simeon, California. Wing- erworth's oak dining room was crated and shipped over for this purpose, but like many rooms Hearst bought, it was never used. It languished in storage for years, until Hearst's dwindling finances forced a sale in 1941 of many of his acquisitions, including the oak drawing room, at an auction organized by Hammer Galleries in New York. Dalva Brothers Antiques in New York purchased the drawing room, and some years later, Dallas architect Wil- son McClure, a longtime client of Dalva, acquired it. W ilson McClure made a name for himself de- signing charming cot- tages in West Highland Park during the '30s and '40s. As his reputation grew, he built larger, more prestigious houses through- out the Park Cities and Preston Hollow, many of them in the Georgian style, and others with a Texas modern bent. In 1950, he built a two-bedroom 2,400-square- foot bachelor home for himself on Pres- ton Road. It's compact, but the classical facade is beautifully proportioned, with massively scaled windows centered under an early Greek pediment design. In back, McClure designed modern, double-height sliding glass doors. Set on a large terraced lot with a creek below, the house's big windows give the house an indoor-outdoor feel, and its thick concrete construction and double-pane windows — both advanced materials for the time — were designed to block traffic noise from Preston Road. Most significantly, McClure placed the 300-year-old oak drawing room, which he'd brought down from New York, prominently in the center of the house. He lightened the dark oak by bleaching it — a process that included closing up the room for weeks to let the finish season in the heat. The resulting pale wood was a chic contrast to his high-gloss, black- painted wood floors. At 16 feet high, and 20 by 29 feet in size, the oak drawing room is proportioned exactly as it was at Wingerworth. While there would only ever be one 300-year-old oak drawing room, McClure modeled many of his later and more grand houses after his bachelor pad, which was a sort of opera set filled with theatrical effects. There were many stylish aspects to emulate, including its round dining room, whose walls are covered in a hand-painted pastoral scene on canvas. He was also known for designing invisible jib doors flush to the walls; there are a number of them in this house. The most notable one leads from the round dining room into the kitchen and is a feat of engineering, as it lays imperceptibly within the curved walls. The bedrooms are tiny by today's standards, and the smallest is located at the top of a steeply pitched creaky stair- case. Even though the house has changed hands numerous times, its architecture and footprint have remarkably remained unchanged. When Minton and Peavy moved in, their tweaks were minimal and cosmetic, such as repainting the black wood floors. The library walls and ceiling were refinished in a gleaming tortoise-shell lacquer, applied by artisan Shaun Christopher, who layered 18 coats of lacquer to achieve the dra- matic effect. Christopher also faux-finished molding in the library and the walls of the master bedroom to mimic the bleached oak wood paneling of the drawing room. The master bedroom ceiling was silver-leafed to help bounce light, and a pair of invis- ible jib doors hides behind mirrors and faux-finishing. McClure's exquisite architecture is the The oak drawing-room paneling, pilasters, capitals, and marble mantel all date to 1729, salvaged from Wingerworth Hall, Derbyshire, England. Iron-and-glass table from Minton-Corley Collection. Paintings include Italian landscapes and a Christian Berard portrait.