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Miss Belle's House (a.k.a. Miss Belle's Place)
Scroll down past photo for text.
This is the spot in Huffhines Park where Miss Belle's House is supposed to be placed, presumably permanently.
In May 2021, after the site of the former Owens' Spring Creek Farm and Factory was sold (to a company that has since built three big, ugly warehouses on the property), the historic old residence known as Miss Belle's House, which had had a pride of place on the farm since 1979, was moved to a vacant lot next to the Richardson Fire Department Training Center on Lookout Drive, and there it has sat, more or less neglected, for four long years.
When the City of Richardson finally got around to deciding what to do with Miss Belle's House, it was announced that it would be moved in 2023 to Huffhines Park, but it wasn't. Later, it was announced that the move would take place in 2024. It didn't. Earlier this year (2025), the city newspaper, RICHARDSON TODAY, carried an article saying that the house would finally be moved on Saturday, May 11. It wasn't.
As it currently stands, the move is set to take place on June 14. We'll see.
In the meantime, you can learn all about the historic structure by reading the following extract from A Sesquicentennial History of Richardson, Texas, Vol. One (Richardson, Texas: Poor Scholar Publications, 2022), which is available for sale on Amazon.com.
The History of "Miss Belle's Place"
As of the publication of this book in 2022, the Hill-Robberson House, which stood for decades on the Owens Spring Creek Farm, is now temporarily located adjacent to the Richardson Fire Department Training Center on Lookout Drive. What's noteworthy about it, in addition to its Victorian-era architectural style, is that it was inhabited, at different times, by two noteworthy Richardson educators.
The house's original location was 206 Sherman Street, where it was constructed about 1887, after its first occupant, Albert Henry Hill, purchased lot number 1, block 36, from the Houston & Texas Central Railroad.
A native of Allen County, Kentucky (born October 8, 1857), Hill was twenty-nine-years-old and a newly-wed when he and his wife, Lottie, arrived in Texas, where they initially settled in Collin County. They moved to Richardson in 1886, after local school board trustee Henry Hatcher offered Hill the job of principal of the Wheeler School. In addition to tending to the education of the students at the Wheeler School, Professor Hill is noteworthy in Richardson history as the publisher of the town's first newspaper, The Richardson News, started in 1886.
In 1907, Margaret A. Robberson purchased the house for her unmarried daughter, Belle, who was born in Dallas on July 21, 1879.
According to an obituary published in the Richardson Echo in 1940, the year that "Miss Belle" died, she was educated in Dallas, and then taught school at Corsicana before becoming a public-school teacher in Richardson. In addition to teaching, she was very active in both civic and church affairs and belonged to several clubs.
Sometime after moving into the house, Belle Robberson opened a private kindergarten, which she operated until about 1939, when she became ill and went to live with a sister in Dallas, where she died on April 11, 1940. From all accounts, she was very popular with her students and a much beloved member of the community.
After Jean and Albert Lowe donated the house to the City of Richardson in 1979, in memory of Sterling and Bernice Couch, it was moved to Spring Creek Farm, where it remained until May 2021, when it was moved to its present location, pending a decision by the city as to where to place it. It was designated a Texas Historic Landmark in 1982, the first such designated place in Richardson.
If you want to know even more, the City of Richardson has a webpage all about Miss Belle's House.
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