Among the notable architects with listed houses are George Dahl, Herbert Greene, C.D. All houses on the list are at least 50 years old (the cutoff being 1972), which suggests it will require constant revision.īeing selected by a committee chaired by an architect, the list has a certain predilection for the houses architects built for themselves, which tend to be modest in scale (architecture not being among the most remunerative of professions) but of special character. To qualify for the list, houses were deemed to be an essential work by a “revered” Dallas architect exemplary in architectural style early for its type or innovative in its design one of the last of its particular type associated with a prominent family or historical event a part of a notable group or district or set in an important landscape. “I almost hate to drive down the street because they’re disappearing so fast,” Winters says. Other Dilbecks have not fared so well, including a run of 20 houses on Bryn Mawr Drive designed for the developer Sam Lobello. (The group, known as the “Four Corners,” is counted as a unit on the list, meaning the “top 10″ is in fact a top 13.) “Those four houses are such an incredible exclamation point for him in his career,” says Winters, who is at work on a monograph on Dilbeck. (Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer)Īlso included are four houses on the facing corners at the intersection of Shenandoah and Douglas streets, all designed by the idiosyncratic Dallas architect Charles Dilbeck. The exterior 4145 Shenandoah St, Charles Dilbeck, architect, in University Park. Williams and considered the progenitor of Texas regional modernism and the 1958 residence designed by the modernist Scott Lyons for Texas Instruments founder Eugene McDermott and his wife, Margaret McDermott. Among those included in that group are the sprawling 1927 Mediterranean mansion built for Highland Park developer Hugh Prather the 1933 Elbert Williams House, designed by David R. Though the houses on the list are unranked, a “Top 10″ is identified. Actually, it is now a “Top 99″ - the recently demolished home on Belfort Place was among those selected, as one of just three (now two, alas) remaining streamline moderne homes in the Park Cities. Were they still standing, both the Penson and Crow houses would have been locks for Preservation Park Cities’ “Top 100″ list. Beal had purchased the Turtle Creek property for more than $50 million, only to replace it. Hill, architect of the former Dallas municipal building on Harwood Street. Its beginning might be pinpointed to 2017, when the financier Andy Beal ordered the demolition of the former Trammell Crow residence, a 105-year-old, 10,000-square-foot Tudor mansion designed by C.D. It is an obscene trend: mansions being torn down to be replaced by even larger mansions. “The wealth has gotten so great, people think nothing of scrapping what’s there,” says Good. The modern architecture of the midcentury is particularly vulnerable, due to its modesty in both scale and presumption, but even the grandest homes in the most traditional of styles are subject to destruction. Bitter irony: its replacement, designed by Bernbaum/Magadini Architects and now rising, is much in the spirit of Ford’s original - and so, a needless loss. It was razed in 2016 by auto dealer Lute Riley, who then sold the prime lot on Armstrong Avenue for a profit. The essential weakness of the proposed ordinances, none of which would block a determined demolisher, suggests the difficulty of passing any protective legislation in the conservative Park Cities, where property rights are sacrosanct.Īnd yet, the proposed legislation might have saved O’Neil Ford’s Penson House of 1954, a 9,800-square-foot example of the architect’s distinctively Texan modern language. The group would like the Park City municipalities to adopt three ordinances: a 60-day demolition delay, which would allow advocates time to bring recalcitrant owners to reason a requirement that any demolition permit be accompanied by a building permit, to stop the clearing of sites by speculators and the destruction of homes to create enlarged lawns (both persistent issues) and a tree ordinance requiring the preservation of any tree over 24 inches in diameter not within the footprint of the new residence. “We want to use the list to gain some traction to get new landmark ordinances passed,” says architect Larry Good, a founding principal of the firm Good Fulton Farrell and chair of the selection committee. To combat the epidemic of destruction, the advocacy group Preservation Park Cities is publishing a list of the “Top 100″ historic and architecturally significant homes in Highland Park and University Park.
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