Flippen Homestead and the Founding of Highland Park

Highland Park began as a failed development. The Handbook of Texas says Philadelphia investors bought the land in 1889 for Philadelphia Place, an exclusive neighborhood on Turtle Creek, and agent Henry Exall dammed the creek to make Exall Lake. The panic of 1893 ended the plan, and Exall kept his Lomo Alto horse farm. In 1906 John Armstrong bought 1,326 acres by the Handbook's count and hired landscape architect Wilbur Cook, with George Kessler helping plan. A steamboat once ran on the lake, and the first addition was sold under the slogan "Beyond the City's Dust and Smoke."

What the plaque says

Flippen Homestead and the Founding of Highland Park To fulfill his dream for an exclusive residential neighborhood north of Dallas, Col. John S. Armstrong in 1906 purchased 1,350 acres of land in this area, including the "Lomo Alto" Horse Farm, and secured the services of Beverly Hills' landscape architect Wilbur David Cook to lay out the suburb. Upon Armstrong's death in 1908, the Flippen-Prather Realty Co. continued plans for development of the neighborhood, which was named Highland Park (an erroneous English translation of "Lomo Alto"). In 1909, this horse farm was deeded to Armstrong's daughters, Minnie May Flippen and Johnetta Prather, each of whom was the spouse of a principal in the Flippen-Prather Realty Co. A coin was flipped to determine first choice for a homesite, and the Flippens won the toss. Dallas architect C. D. Hill designed a house for them based on George Washington's Mount Vernon. Completed in 1910, the house served as an example for attracting Dallas' elite to Highland Park. Although radically altered externally over the years, the basic Flippen homestead retains significance for its association with the founders of Highland Park and as a reflection of Dallas' early 20th-century growth. 1990

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.9 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.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 3.4 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 — 3.9 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 — 4.2 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

• Preston Road — 0.4 mi
• Highland Park Methodist Church — 1.1 mi
• Cedar Springs — 1.2 mi
• Oaklawn United Methodist Church — 1.5 mi