Dallas's New (Old) Boomburbs

Not so long ago, Dallas's inner-ring suburbs were going the way of the dodo bird. Young couples, tired of long exurban commutes and flush with realty-boom dollars were moving downtown, "buying up 60-by-140 foot lots and stacking them with 4,000 square feet of living space," Nathan Halsey, a Dallas-area builder told House & Garden magazine in 2006. Fighting back, residents of suburban redoubts like Lakewood and Vickery Place formed conservation districts to protect early 20th century cottages and Modernist slab houses, many of which had been only recently reclaimed from years of neglect.

So it's nice to see a piece like this weekend feature in the Dallas Morning News, about the centennial celebration happening in Winnetka Heights, a nabe in the Oak Cliff area of the city. Founded in 1908 and sold by developers as "an ideal suburb," Winnetka Heights is a mix of grand homes and Craftsman cottages, earning it an historic designation in the early '80s. (The area was also home to the Southland Ice Company, the first store in a chain that became 7-11.) That vote of confidence from the city encouraged homebuyers to restore the larger dwellings that had been broken into apartments to single-family homes, and A combination of good schools, diverse population and a "live-and-let-live" attitude, according to one resident, make it emblematic of a suburb that's adapted succesfully to urban pressures.