The first house built in River Oaks was constructed by cotton exporter William L. Clayton, a cofounder of Anderson, Clayton and Company and undersecretary of state for economic affairs during the Harry Truman administration. William and his wife, Susan Vaughan Clayton, built it as a resort cottage, to which they moved each summer from their town house near the Museum of Fine Arts, slightly less than three miles away. In the early 1930s the house came to be occupied year-round by their daughter, Susan Clayton and her husband, S. Maurice McAshan. Sue Clayton was fascinated by Southern architecture and had Briscoe design the house as a miniature Mount Vernon. Native plant horticulturist and propagator Lynn M. Lowery planned the grounds of the two-acre site for Susan McAshan. Next door at 3390 Inwood Drive is a neo-Edwardian butterfly-plan house of 2004 by Curtis and Windham.