811 West Oak Street- Martin-Russell House

Dr. M. L. Martin (1869-1941) and his wife, Ailsey (Forester) Martin (1890-1968) completed this house in 1926. Ailsey grew up on the nearby Forester Ranch (established 1852) with the celebrated "Two-I-Jinglebob" brand. Dr. Martin was born in South Carolina and received degrees from Peabody College (Nashville, TN) in 1892 and the University of Texas at Austin in 1899. He served in the medical corps during World War I and was a doctor in Denton for forty years until his death. Pilot Point native James Holford Russell and his wife, Ava Lee (Mars) Russell, bought the house in 1945. Russell managed Russell's Department Store, part of a family business that debuted in Denton in 1925. The Russells lived here until 1967.

Prominent features of the Georgian Revival style house include its red brick veneer and white stone trim, green-tinted tile roof with dormers, arched windows with keystones, pedimented entryway door surround, wrought iron balconies and symmetrical massing.72 This Colonial Revival style house has the typical symmetrically balanced windows with centered door. The adjacent paired windows have double hung sashes, with multi-pane glazing in the upper sashes on the second story and full multi-pane glazing for the center opening windows downstairs. The design focuses attention on the accentuated front door details without a porch. Georgian influence highlights arched fanlights over the large lower windows and incorporated as part of the dormer windows, with corner stone accents around the windows. Other examples include 912 West Oak and 915 West Oak as a two-story style houses with typical front door entry complemented with extended forward porch. This is the only example of this style house in the district.