Dallas Symphony

The orchestra's start is dated differently depending on what counts. The Handbook of Texas says the first permanent Dallas Symphony Orchestra played under Hans Kreissig at Turner Hall on May 22, 1900, with thirty-two players, while the plaque dates the first professional orchestra to 1911. Its rise to major status came under Antal Dorati, who led the reconstituted orchestra from 1945 to 1949. Eduardo Mata, a Mexican conductor hired in 1977, held the podium longer than any other director and was in charge when the Meyerson Symphony Center opened in 1989.

What the plaque says

Dallas Symphony The Dallas Symphony Early efforts to establish a symphony orchestra in Dallas began in 1899 with the formation of the Dallas Symphony Club. It was a short-lived effort, but in 1911 the city's first professional orchestra was established under the Dallas Symphony Orchestra name. Led by a number of prominent conductors over the years, the orchestra has served the community and has become an integral part of the city's cultural life and one of the nation's premiere orchestral ensembles. The Dallas Symphony moved into a new Symphony Center in 1989. 1993

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — steps away
  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.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 0.9 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.2 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.1 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.

More markers nearby

• City of Dallas — 0.8 mi
• Dallas County — 0.8 mi
• John Neely Bryan, 1810-1877 and Margaret Beeman Bryan, 1825-1919 — 0.9 mi
• Crockett, John McClannahan — 0.9 mi