Carl F. Hess II felt a lump catch in his throat. His eyes welled.
The 38-year-old portrait artist and award-winning high school art teacher won’t let himself think it for long.
But the dream he partially built in Dallas’ Cedars neighborhood is slowly slipping away.
Everybody’s got their own name for that five-story, gray-and-black, shotgun-esque house on Seegar Street, less than a mile south of downtown.
D-FW Real Estate News
The Beetlejuice house. The cereal box. The Oreo house. The leaning tower of Cedars.
The narrow, 64-foot-tall home on that itty bitty lot feels out of place. The story behind its building is almost as strange as the structure itself.
Hess built the home but lost ownership of the property to a lender. Still, he says he won’t let his dream die.
There were — and still are — grand plans for a boutique hotel, event space and an art gallery that features the work of underprivileged high school students.
Those dreams were initially dashed by financial struggles, construction stops and starts, a TV show, a divorce, a foreclosure and a failed court case to win the property back.
The Dallas Morning News reviewed tax documents, property records, lawsuits, historic images, interviewed neighbors — and spoke with Hess himself — to learn more about the building’s origins.
This is the story of 1401 Seegar St. and one man’s journey to finish the dream he started. His canvas isn’t finished.
Giving up is “not an option in my mind,” Hess said, breaking up the long pause. “The option for me is to complete the goal and display the work. …There’s a lot of passion behind this building.”
Chris Henry, who lives a few blocks away, rides his bike past a 5-story, 4,293 square foot, unfinished townhouse at 1401 Seegar St. in the Cedars on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
The home and its features
The asking price for the detached, four-story townhome is $649,000. The five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bathroom property is nearly 4,300 square feet.
A tiny black fence closes off a small lawn off to the side — just a small portion of the nearly 2,700-square-foot lot. You can see the Dallas skyline from the rooftop terrace and balcony.
Some might say it looks like something built from blocks by a kindergartener.
The layers of black and gray alternate. Windows appear haphazardly. The front door opens right to the sidewalk on Gould Street and puts you nearly out in the road. One of the neighbors told The News that part of the roof covering blew off in March.
The interior is unfinished. Listing photos make it seem as if workers vanished from the property in the middle of their shifts.
There are the makings of a primary bathroom suite with black onyx tiling and a deep black bathtub. PVC pipes are in place, but sinks are nowhere to be found.
Black tiles on the walls and floors appear throughout, like Tony Montana’s office from the 1983 gangster film Scarface.
Portions of the metal roofing from an outdoor deck have flown off.
A section of corrugated metal roof is seen damaged on the roof-top pergola of a 5-story, 4,293 square foot, unfinished townhouse at 1401 Seegar Street in the Cedars on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
The home is being sold as-is. Representatives for the sellers, a Dallas-based real estate lending group called Bay Mountain Fund I LLC, declined to speak with The News.
Not everyone shares Hess’ optimism or positivity for the project.
“I am not a huge fan of the house,” said Ned Badir, a Cedars resident. “The bigger issue for me is I’m concerned if it passed inspection properly.”
William Baker can see 1401 Seegar St. from his office. He has followed the saga from the first old post oak tree that Hess chopped down at the property. His firm’s been right across the street from the lot for 15 years.
“A lot of the Cedars is really old,” he said. “The platted lots are oddball shapes and different sizes, and that’s why we haven’t had a lot of big developers try to come in and build big things, because it’s too hard to assemble. It’s all these little postage-stamp lots.”
Baker, the co-founder/design director of Jones Baker Interiors + Architecture, talked with Hess about the property here and there. Baker also toured the property after the first two and a half floors were finished.
“We like that it’s a funky neighborhood and everything’s not cookie-cutter. But it does seem like he was building it with the least expensive materials available as a trade-off to maximize square footage. …It’s a pretty damn ugly duckling, if you ask me, from an architectural standpoint. The quality doesn’t seem to be there.”
The property is zoned within the Cedars Subdistrict 1, which allows for single-family residences and other uses. The height limit is 90 feet, so sheer stature isn’t the problem.
“But I’m not sure if it meets other codes,” Baker said. “Is it going to pass final inspections?”
City officials told The News that a permit was issued for a four-story, single-family dwelling with a carport. The home has passed other inspections.
However, a final inspection hasn’t been called on the property.
A City of Dallas stop work order for the property is seen in a patch of weeds next to a 5-story, 4,293 square foot, unfinished townhouse at 1401 Seegar St. in the Cedars on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
Hess said the structure is a “four-story building with a roof deck.” He worked for months to try to get the city to approve a fifth floor, but codes wouldn’t allow it.
The top floor has a two-story ceiling as a result.
“We cannot confirm whether there are any outstanding construction issues at this time. Final inspections are a critical part of the process and must be completed before a final determination can be made,” said Chalonda Mangwiro-Johnson, a spokesperson for the city’s planning and development department.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
This wasn’t the dream Hess had when he purchased that plot of land in Cedars a few years back.
The history
Hess’ dream started with a slender parcel of Cedars dirt.
He and his then-wife purchased the plot of land on Seegar Street in 2018 after obtaining a loan for more than $451,000, according to Dallas County deed records.
Carl Hess with some of his former art students.
Courtesy of Carl Hess II
As far back as 1999, that property was owned by Dallas-based Pure Ice & Cold Storage Co. And for a while, there wasn’t much there.
The corner property was a patch of grass bound by power lines and large shade trees — as shown in Google Maps views of the property, ranging from May 2008 to May 2022.
Hess dabbled in the world of art and real estate.
Since 2002, Hess has painted oil portraits of former President Barack Obama, Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, mayors, federal judges, ambassadors, governors, bishops and pastors.
He taught art at Skyline and Bryan Adams high schools for eight years.
He entered the real estate world in November 2018, founding Chess Homes LLC. The same month, he purchased the land.
“I’m an artist. And I’m an artist before I’m a builder. And I was an artist before I was a real estate developer,” Hess said.
The Memphis native fell in love with the neighborhood before he bought the lot. Hess lived two lots down from where he’d build the home. The goal was to live nearby as he built the house, but he ended up buying a house in Forney as his household grew.
The building
The foundation of the home was laid in 2022, and Hess had big dreams for the property. It was supposed to be a family home.
Hess took a break from teaching and gained some needed experience flipping houses in Oak Cliff.
The foundation was laid on Seegar Street, but he pushed back further construction to travel to Tennessee and film an HGTV show Moving Memphis with his then-wife that summer.
The show never got off the ground, and the couple split. Hess filed for divorce. The next day — Home Depot delivered the wood for the first floor, he said.
“I was very determined to build this house, but because of that, my entire focus shifted,” Hess said. “I wanted to just really consider what my purpose was for this home, and God, what do I do with this extremely tall building?”
He prayed. He pivoted.
Zoning would allow for the boutique hotel, event space and art gallery, as far as Hess could tell. He could buy more land. Guests here for trips, events or conferences could crash in the complex centered around the tall shotgun house — which he would call Chess Towers.
Artwork from current and former students would line the walls of the building. Each room would have its own dedicated theme, and guests would scan a QR code to purchase prints or original works.
One of Carl Hess’ art students painting inside the home at 1401 Seegar St. in Dallas.
Courtesy of Carl F. Hess
Some students had already completed work inside the building. One painted a mural in the elevator shaft that told the story of Dallas from the depths of the Trinity River to the heights of the city skyline.
“That’s pretty much the basis … giving students an opportunity outside of the four walls of their high school to be a professional and to show their work at a young age,” Hess said.
The struggles and foreclosure
Hess said he stepped away from teaching to try and finish the building. He got his budget for the project together in 2019. He didn’t factor in material and other costs increases following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The jump left Hess coming out of pocket for additional expenses.
“I found myself at night painting portraits and during the daytime I was working at that building, hanging five stories from a [mechanical] lift,” he said. “I ran out of money.”
Deed records show Hess gave the Seegar Street property to his firm, Chess Homes, on May 13, 2022. Three days later, the business took out a $532,300 loan against the property from Bay Mountain.
A woman walks a dog past a 5-story, 4,293 square foot, unfinished townhouse at 1401 Seegar Street in the Cedars on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
Hess said he went looking for investors. Three months turned to six. Six months turned to a year.
Hess’ business couldn’t meet the loan obligations, and the home was taken by the lender. It remains under their ownership, according to county records.
Hess attempted to block the sale, filing a lawsuit against Bay Mountain in Dallas County Court. The case was dismissed July 15 after Hess failed to appear at a hearing, according to court records.
Hess said he wasn’t aware of the hearing.
His dream on Seegar Street sits unfinished and in jeopardy. But Hess is holding out hope.
He says the current ownership group is working with him behind the scenes to bring his vision to life — despite the fact that the home is listed for sale on the open market. Attempts to contact Bay Mountain Fund were not returned.
He still hopes to turn this property and two lots nearby into a boutique hotel campus.
“It’s more for me the passion behind it versus a piece of real estate,” Hess said. “This was bigger than a piece of real estate.”
A lockbox is seen on a doorway to a 5-story, 4,293 square foot, unfinished townhouse at 1401 Seegar Street in the Cedars on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer