The Dark Years

After fourteen years of waiting, Damon Shipp was finally able to cut the house into apartments. It is easy to respect Mr. Shipp for patiently waiting for so long in allowing us to rent the house at a low price when he could made much more by dividing it into more units. However, he did allow a unique and beautiful home to slowly decline without repair.

In the fall and winter of 1954 at Camp Fuji in Japan I knew from letters from Mom and others the house was made into four apartments. In February 1955 I returned from military service and soon drove to Munger Place to see the house and neighborhood. I was shocked and depressed when I approached the Collett and Tremont intersection. Mere words cannot express the total disregard for human habituation in the gluttony of profit that must have gone in the remaking of the fine old home. Except for the small space in the middle, the main porch was gone. In the place of the great wraparound porch was dirt. Two brick columns were left to hold up the once well-placed front gable with the four windows. The two outer brick columns were replaced by poles. Without the columns and porch the house seemed to lunge forward. Two outside stairs were added for the two upstairs apartments. They were so narrow they would have been difficult to use with a large package in hand. The total effect of the two stairs with the absence of the porch and proper balance was that of a large crab lunging right at you. The house actually looked like it might creep forward on its own. What would Frank Lloyd Wright have said! To add to the ridiculous were two 18 inch wide sidewalks built to reach the two crab legs that led upstairs. Another narrow walk led to the door on the Collett side.

 The Above Picture Was Made in 1963 It Was Eight Years Before I Could Bring Myself to Photograph It

The Above Picture Was Made in 1963
It Was Eight Years Before I Could Bring Myself to Photograph It

On my visit back only Travis’ family and the Michell family remained but I did visit Mr Haeber, the next door neighbor, and Roy Bandy whose barber shop had moved to a small place-no longer the center of community life. Munger Place was not the same. Also missing were the Munger Mongrels and my boyhood friend, Joe.

It is hard to criticize Damon Shipp since he could have decided to move us out at any time and make more money on the property. He kept his promise made in 1941 when he told mom he would rent to someone that would stay for a long period. However, the approach taken on the house in 1954 was that of an absentee landlord in a ghetto. Next door, Mr. Haeber still lived in a quality house in good repair and so did many others in Munger Place. What Damon Shipp did to 5003 Tremont was blighting a neighborhood and escalating its decline.

While it may be difficult not to blame Mr. Shipp for what he did to a magnificent old house in spite of its condition, what he did was minor in comparison to the action of city leaders over the years. Neglect started with the total lack of coordinated planning or conceptualization of future problems and the absence of municipal zoning policy until 1927 by city leaders.

As far back as the Kessler Plan of 1911 civic leaders ignored long range planning for short range gains. Munger Place and East Dallas lost planned boulevards and parkways on Ross, Fitzhugh, East Grand and Mill Creek as previously mentioned. The regret is not just that we lost so much in ignoring the Kessler Plan in 1911 –which we did–but that the lesson was not learned. Many times in later years, suggested improvements were once again rejected even though proponents warned that the city was missing the same opportunities as before when the Kessler Plan was ignored.

After the war East Dallas was zoned for multi-family dwellings to attract developers to build better apartments in place of blocks of small, poorly built frame houses. Instead, in the mid fifties, the developers razed beautiful home to build large apartments on Gaston and Live Oak then set their eyes on Swiss. The so-called ‘garden apartments’ looked impressive and modern but many were poorly built then sold in five years for a good profit before decay set in. In a short time they too looked bad.

It seemed to me when I returned to Dallas in 1955 the world had changed. Actually it had but at that time I did not realize how. The automobile was now changing America at a fast pace. Since I was still a kid and loved cars I was blind to what we were losing but so was almost everyone. Many countries enjoy the freedom of cars but still have public transit. As early as 1936, GM, Firestone and Standard Oil created National City Lines to buy and dismantle streetcar systems in California. By 1955 the whole nation was losing transit systems. In Dallas the transit system was still working but soon it was bought by Henry Weinberg who was known for buying transit system, destroying them, then selling them to the city and leaving with the profits. Two months after he became chairman of Dallas Transit, Weinberg cut service on 47 Dallas lines, seven percent of all mileage.

What Weinberg had in mind…can be inferred, with some hindsight, from what he actually did with three transit systems-Scranton, Dallas, and New York’s Fifth Avenue Coach Company… In each of these situations, after gaining control he moved on a multi-front blitz to raise profits through higher fares and reduced costs, paring payroll and cutting back on services and siphoning off assets for his personal gain. At the appropriate time, he would either sell what was left of the company to the city for a handsome profit or, as in the case of Scranton, abandon it.
http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/Pubs/RutledgeUnionism.html

Whether Weinberg was supported by the ‘Auto-Oil-Rubber’ interest or was on his own hardly mattered by the time he destroyed transit here because its days had been numbered for some time.

With the move to the suburbs the inner city began to suffer and Munger Place almost disappeared. The new suburbs were zoned for homes only and that left no place for the corner grocery, pharmacy or movie theater. James Howard Kunstler in his book Home from Nowhere said, “Under the new zoning the only connecting device is the car and its expensive infrastructure.” Munger Place and many other inner city neighborhoods lost the amenities that made a walkable neighborhood possible.

Death of Transit

Death of Transit

As public transit disappeared the need for wider streets to ease congestion rose. What civic leaders did was destroy pleasant drives in Dallas to ease the flow of traffic to the suburbs. Munger Boulevard with its tree-lined shade on its parkway was wiped out for a six lane thoroughfare. This was hard for me and my friends to accept, we had grown together as an entity because of its existence. While none of us lived there anymore, we still considered it an attack to a sacred part of our youth.

The Intersection of Tremont and Munger Boulevard

The Intersection of Tremont and Munger Boulevard

Along with the destruction of the boulevard Collett and Fitzhugh were made into one-way streets. It seemed the city was intent on making East Dallas a lower class section. It was apparent the Munger Place I had known was gone. At that time I knew nothing of the Munger Place of Ruth Cooper’s in the early years or that of Clara Murray’s in the twenties. If I had known the history of their time, I would have been even more depressed. In 1960 the idea of revival was beyond reason to me and others; that was the era of suburbs and transition rings that most all American cities had to live with. Fortunately I was wrong.

Through the decade of the sixties and well into the seventies the decline continued. On Columbia Avenue the Avenue Theater showed X-rated movies and later became a pawn shop. Moore’s Pharmacy became a strip club in the seventies competing with another one at Fitzhugh. It was dangerous to drive through the area.

Columbia and Collett in 1969

 

Collett Avenue Looking South

Collett Avenue Looking South

The first building on the right is the former cleaners and barber shop where Roy Bandy cut hair for years. Once an important center of activity in Munger Place, in 1969 it became Bill’s Bar.

In the early sixties I visited a friend who was an artist. He rented a big two story Prairie Style house on Junius across from Munger Park where the Mongrels had played so many times. I think all of the stores on the south side that were now vacant. My friend, whose name I no longer remember, found the house a godsend with its high ceilings for his giant paintings. The house was falling apart; the wallpaper was almost all gone with the gauze-like material between the wallpaper and wall was hanging down like Spanish moss. It was an interesting experience working your way through the draping gauze with the tall brilliant modern art paintings leaning on the walls. I’m sure the rent was fairly low. If this was where the area was headed, at least it was interesting. My thoughts were along the line of maybe at best it could become a retreat for starving artists. The idea of restoration never entered my mind. My feelings on the 5003 Tremont house were that of loss and when passing by, it felt like some other house.

Worth Street in the Transition Years

Worth Street in the Transition Years

My friend, Steven Fulda, once lived in the first house on the left when it was a nice home.

Across the street my friend Joe Wyatt lived in the house at 4923 Victor. Although Joe’s house was cut into apartments, it stayed in good repair. But today it is one of the few that has not been restored.

Victor Street in Transition

Victor Street in Transition

Although there were a few artists in the area the hope for an artist sector was beyond reality. The streets were full of the downtrodden without money. Rooming houses were there for the few that could afford them and many vacant houses were in danger of burning down. A large number of bars were on Columbia and Collett. There was an organization, the Bois d’ Arc Patriots, that defended tenant rights in the neighborhood but could do little to save what was left of the community.

5003 Tremont in 1973

5003 Tremont in 1973 When this picture was taken I still had no thought of restoration as well as thinking it might be the last picture I would ever take of the house.

When driving by a few years later in the mid seventies, I noticed the outside stairway on the Collett side had collapsed and the house looked vacant. At that time some vacant houses had burned and I thought that would likely be the fate of 5003. I had my camera with me and decided to take again what I thought would be the last pictures of the house.

The Collett Side Without the Stairs

The Collett Side Without the Stairs


Note the wall to the right on the former main entrance. The wall separated the two downstairs apartments making the former living room a bedroom for the apartment on the Collett side. The entrance for the Collett side was the former
dining room door at the end of the wraparound porch.

Collett Side

Collett Side

 

Collett Side

Collett Side

 

East Side

East Side

 

Front side

Front side

Back side, Mid 70s

Back side, Mid 70s

East Front Study Mid 70s vs. East Front Study 1948 Were these curtains the same ones from my sister’s room 27 years later?

East Front Study Mid 70s vs. East Front Study 1948
Were these curtains the same ones from my sister’s room 27 years later?

 

The Frank Lloyd Wright walkthrough cupboard where I played as a kid

The Frank Lloyd Wright walkthrough cupboard where I played as a kid

Shortly after the above pictures of the house were taken things began to look better. To me it seemed that the pictures exemplified rock bottom. What I did not realize was events had been taking place for some time that brought the change in the mid seventies.

In 1964 the City Council had rezoned Swiss Avenue from Fitzhugh to LaVista to be open to developers for apartments. This total disregard for neighborhood attractiveness and sell out to developers must have been so blatant that it caused a backlash. This caused many residents on Swiss to organize. After a long battle the Swiss Avenue residents were able to create a historic district by 1973. They also made loans to some urban pioneers in Munger Place who were fixing up their homes themselves.

In 1969 Harry and Marion Gibson moved to 4949 Worth at Collett. Other urban pioneers saw the opportunity to restore older homes with much more space than average homes. Lakewood Bank made loans available. The Historic Preservation League put together a Historic Dallas fund. Virginia and Lee McAlester with Doug Newby developed a plan for twenty-three properties to be secured. They were resold to individuals and turned back into single-family homes. Harry Gibson recalls Doug Newby often coming to Munger Place riding his bike from SMU without holding the handle bars.

In 1973 there was a gas shortage that increased the price of gas. While that did not scare the public to any great extent, many were tiring of the traffic congestion to the suburbs. Interest in the inner city was developing; this increased with time and was favorable to Munger Place.
Many people were instrumental along with the Gibsons, Newby and the McAlesters. Some of these were Suzanne Starling, Ken Gjemre, Paul Crews, Harold and Gail Green and many others within Munger Place. Others included Adlene Harrison on the City Council and Lynn Dunsavage with the Swiss Avenue Historic District. In 1974 the Historic Preservation League (HPL) campaigned and succeeded in saving the Old Lakewood Library. The HPL also published a guide to buying a home in East Dallas, part of a program to interest potential residents in purchasing and preserving homes in the inner city.
In 1971 my wife Leslie and I moved into a house near White Rock Lake in a neighborhood now called Lakewood Trails. I was worried that the expanding transition rings would bring decay and blight to where we lived in future years. Fortunately the seventies were when the revival began. While the decline in Munger Place may have reached its peak in the early seventies it was soon to turnaround. Since I now again lived in East Dallas, I became interested in the area and worked with an oral history group at the Lakewood Library.

The Texas Legislature passed a bill to provide year-round school with a division of four quarters. Typical of the Legislature, it did not fund the fourth quarter (summer). The school year remained the same 180 days but with three quarters of twelve weeks of classes instead of two semesters of eighteen weeks of classes. While this lasted only a couple of years it did create the need of new courses to fill a gap. I was able to create two new electives; one was an urban studies course that fit into what was happening in Munger Place.

Bill & Cameron on Victor Street with sandwiches my wife Leslie brought us. Summer 1978

Bill & Cameron on Victor Street with sandwiches my wife Leslie brought us.
Summer 1978

For years part of my summers were spent in summer school or in writing curriculum both of which had become tiring. In May of 1978 I decided to spend much of the summer on the history of Munger Place and to photograph it as well. Cameron Chandler, an outstanding student in my Urban Studies, Photography and Leadership classes, volunteered to work with me.
Most of the photographs we made in the summer of 1978 were of un-restored houses, ones in repair and just a few that were restored. Most important were interviews with people like Ruth Cooper, Clara Murray and Verbie Miller.

Old servant buildings for homes on Reiger faced Elm Alley to the south of Reiger

Old servant buildings for homes on Reiger faced Elm Alley to the south of Reiger

One of the places Cameron and I photographed was the old building at the rear of 4949 Reiger. This was the old café I vaguely remembered as a kid that was just south of Fronk’s Grocery on Collett between Reiger and Victor. The only reason we took the picture was because of its dilapidated state. This was prior to my meeting with Clara Murray, who told me the grand history of the building.

The once elegant Munger Place Women’s Exchange and Tea Room in 1978

The once elegant Munger Place Women’s Exchange and Tea Room in 1978

Growing up in depression-ridden Munger Place made it difficult for me to understand the wealth in Munger Place in the era before the crash of 1929 when I interviewed Claire Murray. The sophistication of the Tea Room Clara described to me was equally surprising to me.

A sketch of the Tea Room in the mid-twenties as described by Clara Murray in 1978

A sketch of the Tea Room in the mid-twenties as described by Clara Murray in 1978

I had lost track of Joe Wyatt in the seventies but thought his grandmother, Mrs. Millican, might still live on the north side of Victor near Collett. My guess was her house was at 5011. Joe’s grandfather married her around 1945. One evening near dusk I was at the curb of 50ll Victor with my tripod setting up to photograph the house. I noticed the elaborate cut glass in the sidelights framing the front door then asked the owner if they would turn on the inside lights so the glasswork would stand out. As well as making a better picture, I met Harold and Gail Green who were restoring the house. Harold and Gail invited Leslie and me for dinner a few times and we discussed Munger Place. I asked Harold if he bought the house from Mrs. Millican as I came more convinced this was the Millican house. Harold said a Mrs. Ayers lived here and he knew no one named Millican.

Once when I again quizzed Harold on who previously lived in the house he replied. “I bought the house from Mrs. Ayers’ son, Joe Wyatt.” It took me a minute to realize that Joe’s mother had later married a man named Ayers and inherited the house from Mrs. Millican. A few years later I connected again with Joe and the Munger Mongrels and he clarified the details.

5011 Victor in restoration during 1978 The interior lights show the glasswork in the sidelights

5011 Victor in restoration during 1978
The interior lights show the glasswork in the sidelights

Munger Place was full of people interested in inner city restoration during the summer of 1978; it was as exciting as a renaissance. Cameron and I ran into Ron Claunch who taught Urban Studies at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. He spent time that summer studying what was taking place in Munger Place. This was the time I made contact with Ruth Cooper, Clara Murray and Verbie Miller. When I asked Mr. Miller if he had any pictures from the years when he ran the cleaners on Collett his answer was, “Boy! We worked back then; we didn’t have time for pictures”.

Cameron and I had the summer off so we did have time for pictures but only a few houses were fully restored.

Below is Harold and Gail Green’s House later in the reconstruction. The house was painted a light blue.

The house below was referred to as the ‘Green Monster’ during its long reconstruction. This was on the south corner on Worth at Munger Boulevard.
greenmonster.jpg

Bill and Cameron

Bill and Cameron

 

Ruth Cooper’s house at 4826 Junius

Ruth Cooper’s house at 4826 Junius

 

Fronk’s Grocery was replaced by the playhouse The trees to the left hide the ruins of the Tea Room

 


By 1978 Munger Place had already hit bottom and was beginning its rebirth. The 5003 Tremont house had been bought by someone with a loan from the Lakewood bank to restore the house. They put up an unnecessary fence then left with the glass window panels and the stained glass dining room windows but no restoration.

The commercial area above was a far cry from the same area in earlier decades and has been slower to rebuild than the rest of the district.