another Dallas historical question (Garland, Mesquite: real estate market, apartments, houses)

[HousesGreenCows]

In the 70s/80s, would I be correct in guessing that the Lakewood/Forest Hills area was the most affluent part of Dallas proper (within the city limits)? From what I gather Preston Hollow takes the honor nowadays, but what about back then? Thx

[TurtleCreek80]

No, I would say apart from the Park Cities (not within Dallas city), Preston Hollow took the honor back then, too. Mary Kay'a famous pink mansion was built on Douglas in the 1980's and it was hardly the first million dollar home in the neighborhood.

Lakewood and Forest Hills were probably at their lowest point in the 1970's as far as values and attractiveness.

You would probably have to go back to the 1920's to find a time when Lakewood / Kessler Park/ Swiss Ave/ Highland Park were all jockeying for "most exclusive".

[mSooner]

Curious...when did the Lakewood M Streets area start its decline?

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by mSooner

Curious...when did the Lakewood M Streets area start its decline?

After World War II. Many socioeconomic factors played into the decline->

1. The "boom" of new, picturesque suburbs being built around the country formed the "American dream" most families aspire to attain to this day. In our area, this first suburban push built Richardson, Garland, Mesquite, etc.

2. Families fleeing the city left a whole bunch of empty properties, albeit some beautiful historic ones! Supply & demand drive price, as we all know, and less demand drove the prices down as well as the quality of tenants. This is the era (1950's-early 1970's) when many of the beautiful grand mansions on Swiss Ave and Gaston, along with homes all over East Dallas, were chopped up into duplexes, 4-plex's, and apartments. Some homes weren't kept up at all, allowing them to be torn down and apartments built in their place- apartments that would turn into seedy slums (continuing to recent years, and even today for a few eyesores).

3. The de-segregation of DISD was another factor that pushed many families either towards private schools (most located in North Dallas) or mostly white areas like the Park Cities and the new suburbs.



The area did not begin to clean up until the early/mid 1970's (and 1990's for some East Dallas neighborhoods like Munger Place) when historic preservation awareness became more mainstream. Most of the conservation / historic districts were designated as such in the 1970's.

[BigDGeek]

I remember when I was a kid growing up in the 80s, Lakewood wasn't considered a nice part of town. At least not among the Preston Hollow set.

[Lakewooder]

Lakewood Proper never really declined. Old East Dallas - Swiss Avenue, Munger Place area did - homes after the war became rooming houses as it was considered patriotic to take in soldiers because there was a housing shortage. My own father lived in a room in a Munger Place 'mansion' on Tremont. Then the city rezoned nearly all of East Dallas (except Lakewood, Lakewood Heights, M-Streets and Hollywood Heights) for apartments. Many mansions along Live Oak and Gaston were torn down for apartments. Junius Heights was also zoned for apartments but fortunately survived without too many being built - exception is along Columbia and Reiger. M-Streets and Hollywood Heights stayed fairly nice but did look a bit frayed.

The historic preservation movement began on Swiss in the early to mid-70s and Lakewood Bank helped bankroll the renovation of Munger Place, which was nearly all rooming houses. It took until the late 1980s to get the area back-zoned to single family.

East Dallas was really the place to live before the Park Cities and Lakewood was still somewhat on par but less expensive up until Judge Mac Taylor from HP excluded HPISD from desegregation. I went to many open houses in both areas as my father was a real estate junkie. You might see a home for $35 - 40K in Lakewood and a similar home in Park Cities would be $40-45K. These would be some of the largest homes! This was in the late 60s into the early 70s. It's hard to believe now, but there were 'normal' meaning middle class types all over even Highland Park up until the early 80s. The area just west of the SMU campus was considered kind of dumpy. My math teacher at Woodrow lived on Normandy. Then the teardowns started...

Really in the 60s, 70s and 80s North Dallas was the buzzword and the place to live - they definitely looked down on Lakewood -and (gasp) Park Cities because those houses were 'old' (see how that trend still holds in some quarters?). My friend's parents like to tell the story about how they purchased a 1920s Lakewood Blvd two-story Hutsell home in the early 60s for $20K and the people from North Dallas in their church would ask, "why would you want to live in that old barn?"

Now that home is worth well over $1,000,000.

[Pete53FR]

Lakewood had pockets of real wealth and than Swiss Avenue, Gaston East of Abrams and some of the streets behind it. School busing did a number on housing in Dallas.

[Walter Benjamin]

There's a piece by real estate maven Douglas Newby on the maneuvering that led to the designation of the Junius Heights historic district -- great storytelling -- one classic moment is when they managed to change the terms of the bar licenses so that when shady bartenders skipped out, the bar operators had a hard time re-opening with new shady bartenders...

"Old East Dallas 1975"
Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 13, Number 01, Spring, 2001, Page: 37 | The Portal to Texas History



And a long piece from 1979 in Texas Monthly by Nicholas Lemann, now dean of the Columbia journalism school, about the machinations of players in the red-hot north Dallas real estate market:

"Sherwood Blount's First Million"
Texas Monthly - Google Books

[Johnhw2]

Thanks for the Tx Monthly article... it was a good read and took me back to another day and time for sure. Sounds like the land in the article was around was around what we now know as the Bent Tree area