Robert E. Lee Park

Sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor first showed Lee with a young soldier, heads bowed against a storm. Association members objected that it looked like a defeated South, Wikipedia reports, so he redesigned it. President Franklin Roosevelt unveiled the bronze on June 12, 1936. In September 2017, after the Charlottesville rally, Dallas took it down, and the park board temporarily restored the original name, Oak Lawn Park. The city auctioned the statue in 2019 for $1,435,000 on terms barring display inside Dallas, and it was installed at a golf resort near Terlingua.

What the plaque says

Robert E. Lee Park The land in this area was once part of a Republic land grant awarded to pioneer William Grigsby. The Dallas Consolidated Electric Street Railway Company bought twenty acres of the property in 1903, and in cooperation with developers Oliver P. Bowser and William H. Lemmon built Oak Lawn Park. Weekend visitors and prospective land buyers paid five cents to ride the streetcar to the park, which offered a variety of recreational activities. The City of Dallas purchased the park with its native trees in 1909. In 1928, the Dallas Southern Memorial Association (DSMA) began plans for the placement of a statue of Robert E. Lee in the park. Executed by Canadian sculptor A. Phimister Proctor, the bronze statue was unveiled on June 12, 1936, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The park's name was changed to Robert E. Lee Park, and two years later, in a cooperative effort by the DSMA, Park and Recreation Board, and the Federal Works Progress Administration, a two-thirds scale replica of Arlington Hall, Robert E. Lee's home in Virginia (now a part of Arlington National Cemetery) was constructed. Throughout its history, this park has provided a place of recreation and relaxation for Dallas citizens. It remains one of the city's most popular attractions. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 1.5 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 — 2.0 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 — 2.6 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 — 3.1 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

• Oaklawn United Methodist Church — 0.3 mi
• Colonel C. C. Slaughter — 0.5 mi
• Greenwood Cemetery — 0.6 mi
• Temple Emanu-El Cemetery — 0.6 mi