Preservationists take a shine to postwar homes
Mid-century housing is being recognized for historic role in suburbanization of America

Saturday, February 7, 2004

By PAUL MEYER / The Dallas Morning News

It may be a sobering thought for aging baby boomers and graying hipsters.

Those seemingly anonymous suburban homes from their youth – typically single-story with an eat-in kitchen and attached two-car garage ...

Well, they have become historic.

Across North Texas and the nation, preservationists are working to protect middle class, post-World War II housing that formed the foundation for a suburban nation.

Their hope is that in the years ahead, these sometimes rundown relics of the 1940s and '50s will be reborn as local and national treasures, the unlikely counterparts to 19th-century Victorian mansions, and Queen Anne and Italianate homes that now populate the historic registries.

"The notion that Leave it to Beaver's house is historic takes a lot of explanation. You often get an open-mouthed, slack-jawed reaction," says Norman Alston, a Dallas-based architect and preservation consultant. "But this really is a uniquely American manifestation of what we wanted and how we lived."

In 2002, the Department of the Interior published the first national guidelines for the preservation of residential suburbs, isolating the period from 1945 to 1960 as the most dramatic suburbanization of America.

"Just a few years ago, people in the preservation community didn't even talk about this stuff," said Dwayne Jones, executive director of Preservation Dallas. "Now you have historic trusts giving awards for buildings being rehabbed. It's slipping into the language in the preservation community."

Neighborhoods can be protected in several ways at the national, state and local level. In Texas, cities can designate neighborhoods as conservation or historic districts.

Historic districts, meanwhile, contain stricter regulations, including a formal review of modifications by a residents' board. But they also come with a tax break for renovation work.

The Hillside neighborhood in Dallas formally applied for conservation status last month and stands to be the city's first protected postwar neighborhood. In Oak Cliff, the Wynnewood North neighborhood plans to pursue its own district this year.

"The joke in the neighborhood is that I'm going to wait until I finish my remodeling, then pursue the district," said Joseph Hernandez, president of the Wynnewood North neighborhood association and a member of Dallas' Landmark Commission. "I've always liked the '50s ranch style. I grew up in one, and there's a charm associated with the look."

Plano officials have studied two similar neighborhoods for possible conservation. In McKinney, postwar neighborhoods were included in a survey of historic buildings identified as priorities for preservation.

"The bulldozer is only so far behind you, and we needed to get ahead of the bulldozer," says Sally Branch, who is leading the effort for Hillside.

"At no time during the process have I heard anyone say, 'Well, these houses are terrible. Let's tear them down.' "

Preservation Dallas, the area's largest nonprofit preservation group, is conducting a citywide survey of historic structures, hoping to collect information on 300,000 structures dating to the mid-1960s. Volunteers and Preservation Dallas staff are taking pictures and writing descriptions of homes and buildings.

From Denver to Long Island to Dallas, communities from the 1950s run the gamut from modern to eyesores to retro-chic.

"I do think that states are starting to do surveys and evaluate residential suburbs from the 20th century because that's so important in the development of American cities," says Carol Shull, keeper of the national register of historic places.

The postwar period witnessed an expanded highway system, a consumptive car culture, the television and a changing family unit.

Changing times demanded a new home.

Garages were suddenly attached prominently. Entire rooms were dedicated to the tube. Sliding glass doors led to backyard barbecues. Kitchens, larger than their Depression-era predecessors, held appliances never before seen.

And don't forget the linoleum, pink Formica countertops and decorative moldings.

"What they represent is the largest building boom in United States history. They also represent a real break in the way we made things in the sense that historic properties had been thought of as historic, rare, unusual, and really old. Part of what makes suburban houses significant is the exact opposite of that," said David Ames, professor in the Department of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware.

"If craftsmanship was the mark of earlier houses, mass production was the mark of these houses."

In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, more than 207,000 homes were built from 1950 to 1959, according to U.S. census data. The decade before, only 87,450 homes hit the ground.

Nationally, home construction jumped from 8.4 million to 14.7 million during the same period.

Dallas, at its core, is a postwar city. Central Expressway construction began in 1947, the same year Fox and Jacobs built its first home in the area.

The suburbs marched northward.

Billed as the country's "largest privately owned housing project," Dallas' Wynnewood North neighborhood offered war veterans a chance to purchase homes without a down payment and with monthly payments beginning at $54, including taxes and insurance, according to a report prepared by historian Ron Emrich. The first available homes built in 1947 were available for between $6,500 and $10,000.

Now homes in that neighborhood run from the mid-$200,000s to mid-$300,000s.

Dallas' Hillside neighborhood mostly dates from 1951 through the early 1960s. The community contains more than 500 homes developed by W.W. Caruth Jr. and William Blessing on agrarian land.

"It's the only history that Dallas has. Is it as old as the buildings of Rome and Paris? No it's not. Is it as old as buildings in Chicago or New York City? No. But it seems to me to be so important for the whole city to retain its history and remember where it has been," said Leif Sandberg, the city's planner in charge of preservation activities.

Despite surging interest, don't expect the majority of homes to suddenly be designated historic.

Preservationists say they're looking for exceptional single structures and neighborhoods largely intact with architectural or historical significance.

"It was a time when you see a lot of first-time homeowners buying houses intended as starter homes. It was almost expected that changes would be made, and finding middle-class subdivisions with integrity can be tricky," said Greg Smith, the national register coordinator for the Texas Historical Commission.

Could we see a Fox and Jacobs subdivision on the register?

"I would think that we would see it," Mr. Alston said. "They were so synonymous with the style of the times. We refer to them like Coke or Kleenex. The brand is the building.

"It's not unlike Henry Ford cars. It was a new way of doing things that represented a new time."

Nationwide, 337 residential properties from 1947 or later are on the list of more than 77,000 national register properties, not including those within historic districts.

Only nine of the postwar homes are in Texas.

"It's a sliding scale. With each year that goes on, it won't be as uncommon to see 1950s houses listed," said Mr. Smith. "It hasn't happened yet where we've taken a pure post-WWII suburban landscape and put together a nomination, but it could happen any time. It's just a matter of identifying those neighborhoods that still have integrity."

E-mail pmeyer@dallasnews.com

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