UPDATED March 24, 2022, 5:45 p.m.: Trailblazing rancher and business owner Nathan Kallison’s 96-year-old ranch in Olmos Park, near San Antonio, has hit the market.
The 4,080-square-foot stone exterior home is listed for $1.45 million, the San Antonio Current reported earlier. That was a reduction from the original price of $1.5 million, according to Realtor.com, which also shows that a little over a decade ago, the property was listed for just $719,000 but never sold.
Though it’s been standing for 96 years, 211 Thelma Drive has only had five owners. The almost century old home is framed by a “huge legendary Magnolia tree” in the front yard, and also features modern touches like a sub zero mini fridge in the bar and a sonic ice machine in the kitchen, according to the listing.
Read more
Residential
Texas
Legendary ranch from “Yellowstone” sold for the first time in 150 years
Residential
Dallas
Almost century-old Dallas estate hits market for $2.5 million
Kallison was a Jewish Ukrainian immigrant fleeing the anti-semitic Czarist regime at the end of the 19th century, according to a biography written by his grandson, Pulitzer prize winning writer Nick Kotz, entitled The Harness Maker’s Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise of South Texas.
He arrived in Chicago in 1890 and then moved south to San Antonio where he began his career as a harness maker. Within a decade, he built his one-room saddlery into the largest farm and ranch supply business in the Southwest and became a pioneer rancher– a rarity for Jewish-Americans at the time.
Kallison’s Store, an early department store for farmers and ranchers, soon became a one-stop shop for everything from agricultural supplies to furniture to clothing and tires. Though the last Kallison’s Department Store closed in the late 1960s, the storied building on Flores street in downtown San Antonio remains, as does its statue of a cowboy holding a saddle.
Kallison went on to buy more than 2,500 acres in central Texas, which came to be known as Kallison Ranch–one of the largest in the region.
In 1926, Kallison hired local builder H.C. Thorman to construct four homes for himself and his 3 children– the Orlos Park property among them.
UPDATED: Adds San Antonio Current’s reporting in second paragraph.