When Paisley Robertson was making her weekend rounds of yard sales in late 1994, she almost blew off the last stop on her list — the one on Kinney Road in South Austin.

NOTE: This story by Charle Ealy was originally posted Sept, 7, 2008. We circulate it now because we will soon compare Fogel’s project with his friend and colleague Charles’s similar and nearly contemporaneous renovation in South Austin.

But the lust for a good deal kept her going, and she ended up getting far more than she bargained for: a house, maybe the largest purchase ever stemming from a local garage sale.

Looking back on that life-changing day, Robertson says she immediately “felt at home” when she walked into the unusual, stone L-shaped structure, where she spied “a little old lady sitting in the corner, ” collecting money for family keepsakes that were no longer destined to be kept.

Being sociable as well as talkative, Robertson sat down for a chat with Lorene Talmadge, whose advanced age hadn’t dimmed her enjoyment of life. “Do you like parties?” Talmadge asked.

And Robertson, a former Texas Chili Parlor waitress and manager for Uncle Walt’s Band, says she “knew right then that I liked her.”

Talmadge, who needed to sell the home that she and her recently deceased relatives had lived in for 30 years, decided that Robertson should be the next owner, later telling her, “I knew you were the one.”

Robertson knew it, too. “I felt like I knew the sad old house when I walked in, ” she says.

Less than a year later, Robertson was the resident of 2411 Kinney Road, starting an odyssey of discovery and more than a decade of restoration.

Neighbors piqued Robertson’s interest in the home by telling her some of the local lore.

A painter named “Señor Foley” used to live there a long time ago, one neighbor told her, unknowingly garbling the name of Seymour Fogel. So Robertson went down to the Austin History Center to check out the story, only to find that one of the greatest artists ever to live in Austin had made the property his home and studio.

She found a Statesman article from the 1950s, in a section that was labeled “Mainly for Women, ” revealing that the house had become a top spot for entertaining. And Robertson found out much more.

The story of the home started in the 1830s, she discovered, when the property was part of a Mexican land grant given to Isaac Decker. About 50 years later, the land was sold to George Peter Hachenberg, a Civil War surgeon who built a stone and wooden barn there in the 1880s.

Robertson has collected mementoes of Hachenberg’s life and several of his inventions, including an early version of the lie detector and a proposal for mass transit.

When the doctor died, the property eventually passed to his heirs, who sold it in 1952 to Austin jeweler Charles Ravey. And by the end of that year, after the property changed hands yet again, Fogel was the new owner.

Fogel, a New York native who had moved to Austin in 1946 to teach art at the University of Texas, was a muralist and painter who had worked in the 1930s with Mexican artist Diego Rivera on the controversial Rockefeller Center mural that was eventually destroyed.

In the early ’50s, Austin sculptor Charles Umlauf, who helped secure a job for Fogel at UT, showed the muralist an old barn built near an orchard on what was then the outskirts of Austin.

Fogel saw much more than a barn. He saw a new home for his wife, Barbara, and baby daughter, Gay.

Thus began a massive project that involved removing the barn’s second story, retaining the original first-story stone walls and reusing the wood from the second story to panel the interior.

The result was a large home, studio and gallery, with open rooms, concrete floors and a bank of windows on the south side looking onto a screened porch. Because the house was oriented to take advantage of the prevailing breezes, Fogel named his home Southwind.

In the new home and studio, Fogel‘s creativity began to blossom. In 1956, he created “Icarian Flight” there, and it’s now listed in Nathaniel Pousette-Dart’s “American Painting Today” as one of the most significant American modern paintings.

Barbara Fogel, the daughter of a timber baron from Oregon, was noteworthy in her own right. A former New York model, she became an artist and children’s book illustrator. Her interests led her to become friends with J. Frank Dobie, and she held salons at Southwind, including one for the visiting T.S. Eliot.

Framed photographs of the Fogels dot the walls of Robertson’s house today, as do snapshots chronicling the early days of Kinney Road.

But by 1960, Seymour Fogel was on the political outs with the University of Texas administration, and the family decided to move to Connecticut. He sold the home to Mildred Denman Ferguson and her family, who lived there for the next 30 years.

During that time, many changes were made to the home. Shag carpet covered the red concrete floors, and much of the character of the original house had been “updated” for the 1970s.

That’s the way it stayed until Robertson came along, shortly after Ferguson died without a will. Her sister, the lady sitting in the corner at the garage sale, was named executor of the estate.

After buying the house, Robertson eventually contacted Fogel‘s daughter and began a correspondence that revealed more details about the home’s heyday.

Armed with such information, Robertson began the long process of returning the home to the way Fogel had envisioned it, as best she could.

The shag carpet was removed, the concrete floors were revealed and a faded original Fogel mural on the south wall of the home was restored. The home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and named a City of Austin historic landmark, thanks to Robertson’s efforts.

Robertson also installed sculpture in the spacious backyard. And true to the spirit of Lorene Talmadge, she threw a lot of parties in the next 13 years.

But after a long effort to return Southwind to its glory, Robertson has decided it’s time to move on. (Note: As of July, 2017, Robertson still owns Southwind and still lives there.)

“When I found the house, I fell in love, and I spent all these years putting it back the way it was, ” says Robertson, who recently entered her 60s. “I still do all the yard work. But now it’s time to take care of me again.”

Disdainful of the recent condominium development that has changed the once-pastoral feel of Kinney Road, Robertson doesn’t want to sell the property to the highest bidder.

So, after a long search for a real estate agent who would make sure the property was protected, she ended up in the care of Marjory Gentsch and Beyrl Armstrong of the Hill Country Green Team.

Because Robertson was determined to preserve the property, Armstrong suggested that she sell it with a conservation easement.

“I knew that these protections could also be afforded to historically significant properties, ” Armstrong says. “Paisley embraced the idea, and we have made an initial agreement with the San Antonio Conservation Society, a statewide historical conservation and preservation organization, to act as her partner in the perpetual protection of Southwind.”

Armstrong says that a historic preservation and conservation easement will mean that a new owner will agree with a third party, in this case the San Antonio society, “to surrender certain rights of use to the organization in return for the organization’s commitment to protecting the property against any future violation of these use restrictions.”

In the case of Southwind, he says, the San Antonio group “will monitor any future remodeling of the historical portions of the property and ensure that the entire grounds stay intact and undeveloped.”

Such agreements will diminish the value of the property , but also will provide tax breaks for the new owner. “To our knowledge, this is the first time that this mechanism has been used to protect an historical property in Austin, ” Armstrong says. “HPCEs have been used in other states for many years, to great effect.”

The list price for the house and almost an acre of land is $1.25 million.

The main house has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and 3,124 square feet. A separate structure that is not historic could be used as a studio.

Sitting in the kitchen, Robertson is a bit wistful about leaving Southwind. “But I want to start fitting work into play, rather than the other way around, ” she says.

In the past few years, she has made her living by running a house-cleaning business called Thelma & Louise, whose motto is, “You get what you settle for.”

And she no longer wants to spend her free time taking care of a big house and grounds, with all the responsibilities. “I want to live like I did when I was in my 20s, ” she says. “And I want to get some rest.”

But even the sale of the house promises to be more than the usual chore because of Robertson’s concerns. “I will not sell her to just anyone, ” Robertson says. “She is one-of-a-kind, and I love this place.”