The Urban Neighborhoods of Dallas

Victorian-Era Home in Dallas

Dallas has a history stretching back to the mid- 19th Century, but the boom of the 1980s seems to have changed it forever. The metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. It's also the core of the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States that lacks any navigable link to the sea.

Given its also located on a prairie without geographic confines or natural barriers, its a wonder there are any skyscrapers ar anything that grew to reflect in some way the typical notion of a city with a downtown core surrounded by neighborhoods. But its my understanding that has been the criticism of Dallas, that there's no downtown. It's also one the city is working hard to overcome. 

The area is undergoing a transition as dozens of residential conversions and new high rise condos bring more permanent residents downtown. The number of residents downtown has doubled in the last decade to reach just shy of 30,000. Moreover the nearby neighborhood of Oak Lawn has had a ten percent increase in population since 2000 and has about 40,000 residents. 

Buildings in Downtown Dallas

An improvement over Oak Lawn is an area on the opposite side of Turtle Creek/Katy Trail known as Uptown. The number of vacant lots here is far fewer and the neighborhood is both more walkable, without the pedestrian threats of busy streets such as Lemmon and Oak Lawn Avenue which cut through the neighborhood of Oak Lawn. 

Most of the buildings in downtown Dallas and the surrounding neighborhoods are from the past 40 years. It's also apparent from the buildings the area has become more dense over time. In the example of Oak Lawn, there are scattered single-family homes from the period of 1910-1930 around on large lots. One can assume the area was once primarily filled with these "streetcar suburb" type homes. As they have been demolished, apartment and condominium complexes have been filled in, in many cases without much thought towards planning. Instead of facing the street, many are lined along a narrow alleyway and sit four deep on the lot. 

I've long been an advocate of an organic building process that lets structures be replace piecemeal slowly, but the two neighborhoods give me pause. It seems clear that in the uptown area, structures have been cleared and replaced in large sections. The result is a better consistency and street scape. Of course this would not be the case if the structures had been replaced with the same type of structures, or at least the same orientation.

The other interesting neighborhood is known as State Thomas, which according to Wikipedia contains the largest collection of Victorian-era homes remaining in Dallas. These are mixed in with a variety of very attractive newer condominium buildings, with commercial uses such as restaurants mixed in. 

Another neighborhood that has been brought to my attention is known as Oak Cliff. It seems to have a number of advocates out there. I paid a visit myself and from my initial inspection, I can say with relative certainty the Wikipedia statement about State Thomas is not at all accurate. Perhaps it would be true should you add the word "restored" before "Victorian-era." 

From what I know, these neighborhoods, plus downtown are the most urban neighborhoods in the city. With a little luck, one of them will soon be home. 

The Image and Ideas of Dallas

Steam Engine in Grapevine, Texas

I arrived in Dallas in the early part of 2010 and was greeted by some snow. That was the first preconceived notion about the region that was broken for me.

I moved here with my partner from Brooklyn. I was concerned people in the South would have some animosity to New Yorkers- its that one cover of New York Magazine, which I think featured Newt Gingrich the on the cover, with the headline WHY AMERICA HATES NEW YORK. With that I suggested we say we hailed from Pittsburgh, the city we lived in prior to Brooklyn.

Eventually I got around to saying Brooklyn. It was easier that backtracking and explaining the last two years that followed our time in Pittsburgh-- in the capital of the world. It was pretty hard anyway given the license plate was still from New York and the back of the car said Bay Ridge Honda.

Compared to New York, or even Pittsburgh, we figured there wasn't much of a city in Dallas. Sure there were skyscrapers, but you couldn't really walk around or use public transit. With that we figured if we must drive, it may be wise to find a somewhat walkable suburb and at least limit travel time to my partner's work near the airport. We found Grapevine, Texas.

There was always some chance we would move again, but the four beasts that came along made it hard to find a rental, at least one in a place we would feel comfortable living. So we bought a house. The size of course made it attractive-especially compared to the 700 square foot apartment in Brooklyn.

On one of the first days here I heard the sound of a steam train. This was familiar to me as I grew up in a town with a steam train, however the sound of the train came a bit later. It's more accurate to say there was the rusting hulk of a steam engine that sat at the local landmark known as the Horseshoe Curve. For me, and many others in the town, it represented a glorious and prosperous past. Altoona wasn't a rust-belt city exactly-it hadn't been as hard hit as the towns with mills, like Johnstown and Pittsburgh. But it was always clear downtown and elsewhere that things weren't what they used to be.

Then one day came the inspiration and funding to make the old rusting hulk of metal run again. That they did, although it didn't last long before the boiler blew and the engine was removed from public view.

That was the background for me of hearing this steam engine in my new town of Grapevine. Exploring more, I discovered they also had a nice train station and the trains, while not always powered by steam, made regular runs to the Fort Worth Stockyards. Grapevine has two things Altoona didn't have, a working steam engine and a viable Main Street.

Altoona was something I left long ago, however and the infatuation with Grapevine began to dissipate. It never was an infatuation exactly, rather a best option at the time. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to live, and perhaps the best suburb in the region as far as being a distinct, somewhat walkable place. The thing is, I didn't come directly from Altoona to Grapevine. I have spent 20 years in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and San Francisco in between. After a little more than a year here, the trips to Dallas, and to some extent Fort Worth, became so frequent, and the longing for a more urban environment so strong, it became apparent that the thing to do was move.

This is the point where this blog begins.