Horses a holdover from Spring Branch’s past
Realtor Lauren Taylor is beginning to wonder if she is the only person in Spring Branch who still keeps horses.
Sometimes, when she walks through her neighborhood in Bunker Hill, she looks to see if anyone else has equines.
“Everyone in Spring Branch and Memorial used to have horses,” Taylor said. “There was a riding club right where Sears (in Memorial City Mall) is now.
“People used to literally ride their horses to the rodeo from Memorial.”
She said she has seen family photos, videos her real estate clients have shown her and pictures of the area in the past as well as from her own childhood, which she remembers spending on horseback.
Deed restrictions still allow horses in Bunker Hill.
Taylor lives in a house her grandparents built in a neighborhood that still allows horses.
“Four generations of my family have lived in that house,” she said.
“And we’ve always had horses.”
Her grandparents moved to Spring Branch in the 1950s.
Her grandfather, Keith “Mike” Sell, was an engineer in Oregon.
Her grandmother, Ellen Phillips, was from Houston and graduated from Reagan High School.
On a trip to California, Phillips met Sell, who was attending college in the state.
They married soon after and moved to Houston to pursue careers.
“They moved to Spring Branch, and they bought this land,” Taylor said.
Sell designed the home and helped build it.
People in the neighborhood knew him as a character, she said, a throwback to the old west, with family ties to the Oregon Trail.
“My grandfather used to ride a horse around the neighborhood with a revolver on the saddle,” Taylor said.
Her earliest memories relate to her grandparent’s house.
“I came home from the hospital to that house,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s grandfather bought her the horse she still owns, Fapi, an Arabian.
“We were both 8 years old and now we’re both 33,” Taylor said.
When she was a little girl, she would go doorto-door and sell Girl Scout cookies on horseback.
When she was older, Taylor went to Oklahoma State University to earn a degree in economics, and while there, also got involved in politics.
She moved to Washington, D.C. where she served as a political fundraiser and then worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Eventually, Taylor started to miss her home state.
“I missed having that Texas lifestyle,” she said. “I was tired of living on top of people.
“I was tired of hearing my neighbors upstairs, and I missed having horses in my backyard.”
Taylor decided to go in a different direction.
“On a whim, I moved back to Houston,” she said.
“I didn’t even have a job.”
Also, her grandparents needed her.
“My grandfather had Alzheimer’s and my grandmother needed someone to tend to them and tend to the horses.”
Taylor ended up taking care of her grandparents, the grounds and the animals for the next seven years.
“The whole property was kind of neglected and I took over,” she said.
“I took care of the property for seven years, and I ended up with the property.”
Now Taylor has two horses, a goat and a pond full of catfish.
A little red barn provides shelter for the animals.
“It’s not a ranch,” Taylor said. “It’s a ranchette.” She has remodeled the home and made it her own.
Her 3-year old son, Grady, is the fifth generation of the family to live in the home.
Taylor said a lot has changed in the neighborhood.
Older homes are being torn down to make room for new houses, and no one that she knows still has horses.
Still, Spring Branch feels the same in a lot of ways, Taylor said.
“Spring Branch is like a small town,” she said.
“It has the values of a small-town.
“You really get to know the community.”
Taylor also sees the neighborhood through the eyes of Realtor now as an agent for Coldwell Banker.
“You’ve still got all these over-sized lots here that you can’t find anywhere else,” she said.
Carol Peyton, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker’s David Young Team, said Taylor’s knowledge of the area makes her a great choice as an agent.
“It’s easier to sell something when you’re passionate about it,” she said.
“A lot of Lauren’s clients are in challenging transitions in their lives,” Peyton said.
“I think a lot of her success is because she has had some of the same experiences.”
Taylor knows what it’s like to feel attached to a property.
She understands needing to make a move for a career or feeling drawn to coming back home.
Most of all, she understands why people are drawn to Houston and especially to Spring Branch.
“I think I know Spring Branch better than almost anyone else,” she said.
“Home is where your heart is,” she said. “Homes are where you raise your family.
“And when you can live in a house that your grandfather built, that’s a cool thing.”