Anyone who rehabilitates old homes is interested in history, said Jamey Ice, a longtime resident of Fairmount.
Ice should know as he is by turns a real estate businessman, podcaster, marketing executive and rock ‘n’ roller.
Practicing the gospel of renovation that he preaches, Ice and his wife, Melissa, purchased a home built in 1919 on Sixth Avenue in the Fairmount National Historic District in 2012.
The near century-old two-story home more than showed its age, Ice said.
“We used to live up the road on another street, and this house was empty and abandoned,” he said. “The windows were boarded up, some were busted in, but we loved it. It was always our dream house. It just didn’t quite look like it.”
It was one of the larger homes in the neighborhood, at about 4,200 square feet, that had a cool brick look, a big — but collapsed — front porch and, that rarity for the area, a basement, Ice said.
It also had that all-important word in renovation: potential, he said.
Ice, who by that time had established his business 6th Ave Homes, which buys, sells, does design work on old homes as well as new construction in the style of older houses, tried to purchase the property, which had gone into foreclosure. He finally purchased it at the courthouse steps for $1 more than the asking price.
“You couldn’t touch that today,” he said of the deal.
Once inside their dream home, the couple learned some of it was a bit more of a nightmare. Cheap, weathered vinyl covered much of the floor, and leaks were “all over the place,” Ice said.
When he ripped out the flooring, he uncovered a bit more of the original house.
“It has these beautiful longleaf pine floors. Oh wow, just a dream,” he said.
Good bones, as home remodelers love to find. Still, the house came with its share of old-house headaches.
“The doors weren’t great in the summer, and then in the winter, they shifted and everything sticks. Everything that was too loose was now too tight,” he said.
But gradually, they brought it back to life.
“I love the creak of old wood. The house had soul, I knew that,” Ice said.
The house is not far from Brewed, the restaurant/coffee shop/bar, which Ice co-owns.
“Brewed was just getting going when we moved, so we were right down the street,” he recalled. “Melissa was just getting The Net FW (a nonprofit that fights sex trafficking) going, which is not far either. So we were just in this little Magnolia-area bubble as we worked on the house.”
Despite touring as part of Green River Ordinance, a successful rock band that he and his brother started at Paschal High School, Ice is a big fan of staying local.
“I’ve traveled the world, but this is my 3-mile-radius bubble,” he said.
He loves the area’s walkability. And while Magnolia has changed from when Ice was a kid, some things have stayed the same — namely Benito’s, the Mexican restaurant that opened in 1981, long before the area was considered anything near “hip.”
It was — and is — his dad’s favorite restaurant.
“There are like two restaurants he will eat in because most are too loud and busy for him, but we grew up going there, and we still go there,” he said.
And he is a big fan of the community spirit of the Fairmount neighborhood that he attributes, in part, to the front porches.
“People see their neighbors,” he said. “When I get home from work and the kids are out front, running around with the other kids, it has this old, old world throwback feel to it. I love it.”
As they built their life in the home, Ice wondered about the families that had lived there. He knew only that the house had three previous owners.
About six months ago, he started getting phone calls from a number with a Los Angeles area code.
“I don’t usually answer calls from numbers I don’t know,” Ice said.
Then he received a text. It said: “I’m a rabbi, and I lived in your house 70 years ago. I’m in Fort Worth for 24 hours.”
He looked her up: Rabbi Anne Brener, an author, speaker and podcast host.
They got together, and Ice learned a lot about the house he thought he would never know.
“Turns out her grandfather, a Polish immigrant, built the house in 1919,” he said. Brener recalled her aunts dancing in the kitchen to the radio and her father’s downtown tailoring business.
Then she noticed one of Ice’s tattoos on his arm.
The tattoo is from Exodus 15, verse 2: “The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.”
“I probably got it when I was 20, but the verse resonated with me,” he said. “And there was this female rabbi from LA, and she’s got this funky jewelry and funky glasses and this big bubbly personality. And we’re in my kitchen, and she just started singing this, that verse, in Hebrew because I guess there’s a song behind it.
“It was one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me,” Ice said.
Brener didn’t have long to stay, but she made an impression.
“One reason she wanted to see the house is because she’s writing a novel based on her early life, and the house is in the novel,” he said. “So who knows, I may learn more.”
For Ice, the meeting was a chance to be reminded why he loves real estate and old homes.
“It’s always about so much more than just buildings,” he said. “I’ve always known that, but it helps to be reminded every once in a while.”
Jamey Ice has lived in the same three-mile radius his entire life, a fact of which he is very proud.
Fairmount
Total population: 3,446
Female: 49% | Male: 51%
Age
0-9: 20%
10-19: 6%
20-29: 10%
30-39: 28%
40-49: 9%
50-59: 10%
60-69: 10%
70-79: 5%
80 and older: 0%
Education
No degree: 15%
High school: 15%
Some college: 15%
Bachelor’s degree: 34% Post-Grad: 21%
Race
White: 72% | Asian: 2% | Hispanic: 23% | Black: 2% | Two or more: 2%
Click on the link to view the schools’ Texas Education Agency ratings:
Young Women’s Leadership Academy
Texans Can Academy – Fort Worth Lancaster Avenue
Alice Carlson Applied Learning Center
Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org.
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