Swiss Avenue

Robert Sylvester Munger, whose name is on Munger Place, was an inventor first. Born at Rutersville in 1854, he took charge of his father's gin at Mexia and patented saw cleaners in 1878 and 1879, plus a pneumatic system to carry seed cotton to the gin. The Handbook of Texas says he ran a Dallas plant from 1885 to 1888, moved to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1889, and turned to real estate in 1902. He died in Birmingham in 1923 and was buried there.

What the plaque says

Swiss Avenue This wide boulevard was a muddy country lane in 1857, when Swiss immigrant Henri Boll named it in honor of his native land. Swiss Avenue was lengthened and paved as part of Munger Place, an exclusive 140-acre residential area developed in 1905 by cotton gin manufacturer R. S. Munger (1854 - 1923). To assure the unified appearance of the neighborhood, Munger imposed such building requirements as $10,000 minimum cost and two-story height. At the same time, the houses are unique because residents were free to choose from the variety of architectural styles popular during the early 20th century, including Tudor Revival, Georgian Revival, and Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie style. Dr. R. W. Baird's Classical Revival residence at 5303 Swiss Avenue was the first one erected here in 1905. By 1920, about 200 elegant homes had been built in the Munger Place addition. Residents included prominent lawyers, bankers, merchants, industrialists, and doctors. In recent years, the Swiss Avenue area declined, and some of the old homes were demolished or divided into apartments. Efforts of the Historic Preservation League and interested citizens to save the neighborhood resulted in the city of Dallas designating it as the city's first historic district in 1973. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 1.8 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 — 1.9 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 Museum of Art — 2.5 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.
• 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.

More markers nearby

• William B. Lipscomb Elementary School — 0.5 mi
• St. Matthew's Cathedral — 0.5 mi
• Grace United Methodist Church — 1.1 mi
• Baylor University Medical Center — 1.5 mi