AUDASE

Midcentury-modern buildings in Dallas attract preservationists
By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News dflick@dallasnews.com
Susan Risinger fell in love with her midcentury-modern house five years ago, well before it was discovered by SpongeBob SquarePants.
CHERYL DIAZ MEYER/DMN Susan Risinger, with son William, 6, was drawn to the midcentury-modern architecture of the Midway Hills neighborhood in northwest Dallas.
When Ms. Risinger and her family moved to Dallas from New York, she knew she wanted something very much like the 1950s-era house in the Midway Hills neighborhood of northwest Dallas.
"I don't really care for the more classical look," she said. "I like the clean lines, the architecture, the windows of midcentury houses."
Not only did Ms. Risinger find the house she coveted, she now lives in an outstanding example of an architectural design that is the new front line in the battle for historic preservation.
In the past few years, the midcentury-modern style has begun attracting preservationists' efforts nationwide. For a variety of reasons – including the city's affinity for teardowns – one of the movement's epicenters is Dallas.
While Preservation Dallas, the city's leading organization dedicated to the conservation of historic structures, is linked in the public mind with protecting Victorian homes and ornate skyscrapers, its most recent battles have centered on buildings from the 1950s and '60s.
In just the past few weeks, for example, the group:
•Obtained national historic status for the 3525 Turtle Creek condominiums, built in 1956.
•Persuaded the City Plan Commission to deny a rezoning request that would have doomed a 1959 insurance office building near Oak Lawn.
•Honored developers who converted the old Fidelity Union Life Towers, built in 1952 and 1959, into condos.
The organization's officers, meanwhile, have declared saving the downtown Statler Hilton Hotel building, constructed in 1958, its highest priority.
The sudden interest may come as a surprise to baby boomers who grew up in the 1950s and '60s. For them, a structure from that era may seem less like an architectural treasure and more like the building where they went to the dentist.
"It's always part of the job of preservation organizations to sell the public on buildings from a time period that is coming of age," said Katherine Seale, executive director of Preservation Dallas.
"When people first began to work to save Victorian homes, a lot of people thought they were pretty ugly."
The interest is, in one sense, inevitable, given the simple passage of time. Some postwar architecture is now half a century old – an age that typically transforms a building from "outdated" to "historic."
"There's no rhyme or reason for 50 years to be the benchmark, but the feeling is that after five decades, we begin to have a clearer view of an era," Ms. Seale said.
"We're coming out of the fog and we can look at it with more distance."
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is widely credited with nurturing the reawakening, although its earliest pronouncements a few years ago were almost defensive. The group noted then that some of the buildings were not even 50 years old and thus were not a part of history, but of the "recent past."
Dallas author Virginia McAlester is updating her book, A Field Guide to American Houses, to include midcentury architecture.
"You're starting to see people on the cutting edge of the arts, the tastemakers, who are into preserving midcentury architecture," she said.
"It just hasn't caught up to the rest of us yet. When you talk about preserving a typical ranch house, people say, 'Oh, well, I grew up in a house like that.' "
But another generation sees it differently.
"I think the clean modern lines are still very popular, and it's got a retro look that's attractive to younger people," Ms. Seale said. "It's got a bit of an edge, a bit of fun to it."
Ms. Risinger's house on Pinocchio Drive, for example, had exactly the feel sought by the makers of a commercial for a SpongeBob SquarePants board game.
"They filmed it here because they said they liked the 1950s look," she said. "Whenever we see it on television, we can really see it's our place. My kids love it."
Dallas is a natural center for midcentury architecture, which thrived during the 1950s and '60s. Subdivisions and commercial buildings were built by the thousands throughout the country during that period, but particularly in booming Sun Belt cities like Dallas.
And, in many cases, they were better than the work of previous generations. The earliest structures in Western cities like Dallas were usually designed by local architects, or by builders with no formal architectural training at all.
But the city's postwar wealth changed that.
"After the war, they were able to hire architects that were nationally and even internationally known," Ms. Seale said.
The very abundance of midcentury-modern buildings creates its own challenges for preservationists. To many people, efforts to protect ranch houses in North Texas sound like an attempt to declare ants an endangered species.
Furthermore, the purposely unadorned look makes midcentury houses and buildings more difficult to love.
"Because they're not eclectic like classical or Tudor or French, it's hard to contemplate midcentury as a distinctive style, but it is," said Willis Winters, a Dallas parks department assistant director who has written several books on local architecture.
"A lot of people see them as throwaways and the first targets for teardowns."
Over the past few years, Mr. Winters cataloged 400 houses for a new book that he co-wrote, Great American Suburbs: Houses of the Park Cities, Texas. Although it is still months before the book's publication date, he said, 20 percent of the houses have since been torn down.
The destruction of midcentury houses and buildings follows a pattern familiar to preservationists – a common and unappreciated architectural style is threatened by new construction. But the threat creates an opportunity.
For one thing, tearing down a building triggers a new appreciation for what is lost. Absence, as they say, makes the heart grow fonder. And it can spur political action.
"Nothing starts up a neighborhood movement like a teardown," Ms. Seale said.
The attrition also allows preservationists to be pickier about what they seek to save.
"Something doesn't qualify as historic just because it's old," Ms. Seale said. "There are a lot of criteria we look at."
In the case of midcentury houses, the appearance of the entire neighborhood is taken into account, as well as the quality of the planning and construction.
Two postwar neighborhoods are considered standouts by local preservationists – Midway Hills in northwest Dallas and Wynnewood North in Oak Cliff, Ms. Seale said.
Both have well-constructed, interesting examples of midcentury-modern styles, and both have been relatively untroubled by teardowns. Still, there are conservation efforts afoot in both places.
The so-called Disney Streets area, where Ms. Risinger lives, is a particular favorite of local preservationists. It was the site of the Dallas Parade of Homes in 1954 and 1955, in which builders showcased the latest in residential styles and technology.
The local home show was among the largest and most popular in the country, attracting up to 100,000 visitors.
In Midway Hills, Jacqueline Ziff is living in a showcased house her late husband bought in 1962, when it was still considered cutting edge. She was surprised when a real estate agency told her recently that it was coming back into style.
"She cautioned me not to do a lot with it," she said. "It has a pink-tile bathroom that I was considering updating. But I guess I won't now."