Dallas News Blog

Actually, what a different city Dallas would be if it has let STAND the houses this beautiful that existed not that long ago as history goes.

When I was growing up in the 50s Dallas, Ross Avenue had already been bulldozed, like Maple before it....both streets apparently once the incredible strips of lavish and beautiful and beautifully built homes. Even in the 50s....less than 50 years after many mansions had been built...it was only used car lots. Today, a half century after that, you'd be hard pressed to find uglier urban strips than Maple Avenue and Ross Avenue....which were once, not so long ago, Dallas' 5th Avenue and Park Avenue.

PS: In the late 60s, Dallas was about to bulldoze Swiss Avenue. We protested and won. City leaders said it was not old enough to be historic. To which I replied with the obvious: It cannot become historic if nothing is allowed to stand more than 35 years.

It's not clear that Col. Hughes built this house; there were plenty of speculative developments, house by house in those days. Maple didn't really take off until the Loop Railroad (streetcars) encouraged building 'out there' along the McKinney and Cedar Sprints roads. This drawing resembles Ivy Hall (later, 1890 or so) which stood across from the Stoneleigh Hotel where the Maple Terrace is now. Such sprawling homes included enough room for entertainment, service areas, back-of-house and servant areas and even cow and horse sheds. Those stately remnnants on Fairmount were once "new", made fashionable by "William B. Gano, who had just completed a large, frame Queen Anne house designed by Dallas architects George W. Stewart and Brock C. Fuller at the northeast corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, and its published image in the Dallas Herald in October 1889" (newlondon.com) created a stir, and such mega-mansions. For these to survive, a public use would have been necessary; San Antonio is littered with the skeletons of these drawings, some rescued, others waiting.