The VILLAGE THAT BECAME a METROPOLIS and HOW IT SOLVED a VITAL PROBLEM
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EVENTY years ago, more or less, a pioneer built him a cabin in the lowlands of a Texas
water course and became the founder of what is now, with one exception, the largest city of the Southwest. Other pioneers came to build their cabins and the settlement soon came to be a village, expanding to the Eastward along its three parallel and adjacent thoroughfares. In time a transcontinental railroad came that way and chose for its right-of-way a fourth street parallel to its three predecessors and immediately adjoining them. Buildings were erected along this right-of-way, stores, warehouses, and the like, °± one, two or three lofty stories, being for the most part the rear ends of the town’s more pretentious store fronts, fashioned after the manner °f’ the times, of common red brick, with long narrow openings capped by corbeled “three rowlock arches,” and with iron window gratings and kn I. downspouts as embellishments. Thus Pacific Avenue, for so the right-of-way was named, was built.
Meanwhile the village became a town and the town became a city and the three quiet avenues o its early days became the downtown section
of a progressive metropolis with an ever changing, more and more imposing, skyline. But there was scant expansion to the North of this district for Pacific Avenue with its grade crossings and its fast freights roaring to the Eastward, gathering all possible speed to make the sharp grade, constituted a mental hazard which no business dared cross. As a result Pacific Avenue and its architecture remained unchanged while a city grew about it.
In 1911 the late George E. Kessler, city planner, recommended in his report on a city plan for Dallas—for the city of this dissertation is Dallas—the removal of the tracks from Pacific Avenue, saying that such a step would be the most revolutionary and the most beneficial the city could take in its progress toward a better city plan. The virtues of such an action needed no further stressing to the people of Dallas and work was begun on the long road to this Herculean accomplishment.
Recently there was held in Dallas the formal opening of Pacific Avenue, a broad, well paved, well lighted thoroughfare a mile in length, empty of railroad traffic—but lined with the facades of PACIFIC AVENUE, DALLAS, LOOKING WEST FROM FIVE POINTS,” SHOWING PRESENT CONDITION. NEW
MEDICAL ARTS BUILDING AT RIGHT, DALLAS ATHLETIC CLUB UNDER CONSTRUCTION AT LEFT
S
EVENTY years ago, more or less, a pioneer built him a cabin in the lowlands of a Texas
water course and became the founder of what is now, with one exception, the largest city of the Southwest. Other pioneers came to build their cabins and the settlement soon came to be a village, expanding to the Eastward along its three parallel and adjacent thoroughfares. In time a transcontinental railroad came that way and chose for its right-of-way a fourth street parallel to its three predecessors and immediately adjoining them. Buildings were erected along this right-of-way, stores, warehouses, and the like, °± one, two or three lofty stories, being for the most part the rear ends of the town’s more pretentious store fronts, fashioned after the manner °f’ the times, of common red brick, with long narrow openings capped by corbeled “three rowlock arches,” and with iron window gratings and kn I. downspouts as embellishments. Thus Pacific Avenue, for so the right-of-way was named, was built.
Meanwhile the village became a town and the town became a city and the three quiet avenues o its early days became the downtown section
of a progressive metropolis with an ever changing, more and more imposing, skyline. But there was scant expansion to the North of this district for Pacific Avenue with its grade crossings and its fast freights roaring to the Eastward, gathering all possible speed to make the sharp grade, constituted a mental hazard which no business dared cross. As a result Pacific Avenue and its architecture remained unchanged while a city grew about it.
In 1911 the late George E. Kessler, city planner, recommended in his report on a city plan for Dallas—for the city of this dissertation is Dallas—the removal of the tracks from Pacific Avenue, saying that such a step would be the most revolutionary and the most beneficial the city could take in its progress toward a better city plan. The virtues of such an action needed no further stressing to the people of Dallas and work was begun on the long road to this Herculean accomplishment.
Recently there was held in Dallas the formal opening of Pacific Avenue, a broad, well paved, well lighted thoroughfare a mile in length, empty of railroad traffic—but lined with the facades of PACIFIC AVENUE, DALLAS, LOOKING WEST FROM FIVE POINTS,” SHOWING PRESENT CONDITION. NEW
MEDICAL ARTS BUILDING AT RIGHT, DALLAS ATHLETIC CLUB UNDER CONSTRUCTION AT LEFT