This house built for Alfred H. and Nettie Ennis Belo is the only remaining residence on once-elite Ross Avenue. The two-story brick classical design has a monumental pedimented portico of six Corinthian columns. A native of North Carolina, Belo headed west after the Civil War, finding work in Galveston with the Galveston Daily News. He soon became partner of the widely circulated paper and sent G. B Dealey to Dallas in 1885 to open a branch, the Dallas Morning News. Belo soon followed, establishing A. H. Belo and Co. His wife, Nettie, built this house on a ten-acre site she acquired with her own funds. The Belo family sold the house in 1922, which became a funeral home until 1977, when the Dallas Bar Association acquired and restored it, adding the Pavilion in 2003 that fronts Flora Street.
On the next block at 2215 Ross, the construction of the tower of the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe (1902, Nicholas J. Clayton; 2005 tower, ArchiTexas) finally brought to completion the red brick Gothic Revival cathedral by Clayton of Galveston. Only the lower three stages of the massive corner tower had originally been built. The attenuated upper stages were constructed based upon Clayton’s original drawings.