This $8 Million Texas Mansion Comes With a Secret Vault

In 1910, when Fort Worth was primarily a cattle depot, a banker named Earl Baldridge hired the architecture firm Sanguinet & Staats to build a three-story limestone mansion. It included double-height limestone columns, intricately carved wood paneling throughout the interior, and, in the basement, a concrete bank vault with an ornate steel door. More than a hundred years later, all of it remains, including the vault door. Today, instead of gold bars, the vault holds a media room.

The house, located in west Fort Worth, was registered as a Texas landmark in 1978. When Paun Peters, president of the oil and gas company Western Production Company, bought the house in 2007 though, it had fallen into a state of relative disrepair. “It had been foreclosed on by the bank,” Peters said. “The previous owner was a personal injury lawyer who’d won a big case, started spending money like crazy, and then his case was overturned on appeal.”