Charles Dilbeck Homes in Cochran Heights

A famous architect once drew small houses for a speculator. The Dilbeck Conservancy says that in 1935 and 1936 Charles Dilbeck designed fifteen modest speculative houses on Milam Street in Cochran Heights for the developer Sammy Lobello, and quotes Dilbeck recalling that the little split-level houses sold as soon as they were finished. Historian Willis Winters told the Dallas Morning News it is unclear why Dilbeck took on mass-produced homes, guessing it may have been a favor to developers. Neighbors, led by Erika Huddleston's research, won this marker; the dedication was set for April 2016.

What the plaque says

Charles Dilbeck Homes in Cochran Heights Charles Stevens Dilbeck (1907-1990) was the son of a builder and lumberman. He grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma, learning his trade from his father. He legendarily designed and built his first project, a Tulsa church, at age eleven. He moved to Dallas in 1932 to capitalize on Texas oil wealth and maintained his practice until 1969. Dilbeck designed at least 630 houses in Dallas and his eclectic work also included Dallas' Belmont Hotel (1940) and El Ranchito restaurant (1946). His Dallas homes are primarily in Lakewood, Preston Hollow, North Oak Cliff, and the park cities. He retired in 1970 after designing a home for himself and his wife. Dilbeck's architecture exhibits dramatic spatial sequencing and exaggerated scale. He incorporated asymmetrical facades, chimney details, dovecotes, turrets, and complex combinations of roof forms and heights. He developed techniques for giving brick and wood an aged appearance and often used salvaged materials. He specified bricks from Palmer Brick Factory and ornamental iron from Potter Ironworks, showing close ties with local craftsmen. Charles Dilbeck designed a community of approximately 60 small bungalows with attached garages for Cochran Heights, built between 1936 and 1940 on a former pecan orchard. Today most of these remain, being the greatest concentration of Dilbeck's work in Dallas. All five of his architectural styles are found in Cochran heights homes: French eclectic, traditional, ranch house, moderne, and colonial revival. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.4 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Fair Park — 3.0 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 3.0 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 3.1 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.

More markers nearby

• North Dallas High School — 0.9 mi
• St. Matthew's Cathedral — 1.0 mi
• Highland Park Methodist Church — 1.2 mi
• Temple Emanu-El Cemetery — 1.3 mi