Larry Speck

A few blocks from the Tenneco Building in downtown Houston sits the modest little Kellum-Noble House of 1851. Simple, clean, taut, and undecorated, the house is an elegant and unaffected response to mid-nineteenth-century residential needs. Its simple, squarish plan yields plain but flexible interior spaces. The deep double-decker porch that surrounds it on all four sides shields it from the hot…