South Boulevard-Park Row Historic District

The district exists because a temple moved. When the city pressed into the Cedars, Temple Emanu-El relocated in 1913 to the corner of Harwood Street and South Boulevard, and Jewish families followed, building fifty-five houses on the 2300 to 2700 blocks between 1914 and 1932. The first permit, in 1912, went to the T. A. Manning home, and most houses were built on speculation. Families began moving north in the 1940s, mansions became apartments, and Interstate 45 later cut the neighborhood in two. The temple building has since been torn down.

What the plaque says

South Boulevard-Park Row Historic District This neighborhood is one of the few remaining intact residential districts which reflect the early twentieth century suburban development of Dallas. Construction of homes in this vicinity began soon after the Jewish Temple Emanuel El was moved here in 1913 from its downtown location. Many early residents of the neighborhood were prominent leaders of the Dallas Jewish community. Included in the district are homes designed by the leading area architects of the time. The structures feature a variety of popular architectural influences, representing details of the Midwestern Prairie, Mission Revival, Classical Revival, and Georgian styles. A gradual migration of area residents to newer suburban developments began following the end of World War II. During the 1950s, the South Boulevard-Park Row neighborhood became the home of many prominent Black leaders of the Dallas area. Residents here have included educators, lawyers, merchants, clergymen, doctors, and business executives. Since the early twentieth century the neighborhood has been a symbol of the growth, prosperity, and vitality of Dallas. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Museum, Dallas — 0.9 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.0 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.
• Fair Park — 1.1 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.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.1 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.

More markers nearby

• John C. McCoy — 0.9 mi
• General Richard M. Gano (C.S.A.) — 0.9 mi
• WRR Radio — 0.9 mi
• Texas Women in the Civil War, A Tribute to — 1.0 mi