How Dallas's First Millionaires Built a Boulevard of Mansions and Lost All But Two: Ross Avenue

There's a house at 4607 Ross Avenue in Dallas that nobody has lived in since 1930. Twelve and a half thousand square feet. Golden brick behind four columns that were cut abroad, shipped to Texas, and hauled from the railhead on a purpose-built carriage pulled by twenty horses per pillar. Hand-carved woodwork, stained glass, seven fireplaces, the original telephone still on the wall. It's the only mansion left on Ross Avenue in anything close to original condition. And the reason is precisely that it stopped being somebody's home. Ross Avenue was the first paved street in Dallas and the most prestigious address the city ever had — the Avenue of the Elite, lined with the houses of the first millionaires Dallas produced. There were dozens of great mansions on it. Two are left. And neither of them is a house. The Belo Mansion survived because it spent fifty years as a funeral home. In May 1934, after a posse fired roughly 130 rounds into his car in Louisiana, Clyde Barrow's body was laid out for public viewing in the front parlour of Colonel Belo's house — the man who founded the Dallas Morning News. Thousands filed through. The Alexander Mansion survived because the Dallas Woman's Forum bought it in 1930 for $65,000, with help from George Bannerman Dealey — the same man Belo had sent up from Galveston in 1885 to start a newspaper. Without that purchase, the people who care for it say, it would have become a funeral home too and been razed decades ago. Everything else went. John Armstrong, the founder of Highland Park, had his own Ross Avenue mansion torn down in 1927. The Conway house became a conservatory of music and was demolished in 1930 for a tire store. The Munger family pulled down their own house rather than watch it decay. And here's the part that turns this from a lament into an argument. Munger Place, in 1905, was the first deed-restricted neighbourhood in Texas — two-storey minimums, masonry exteriors, sixty-foot setbacks, no spec houses. It didn't save Swiss Avenue either. What saved Swiss Avenue was a resident handing the city $500 for a survey, neighbours knocking door to door, and an ordinance passed in 1973. Private restrictions protect a property's value while people still want to live in it. Only a public law protects the building after they stop. CHAPTERS 0:00 The House Nobody Has Lived In 1:57 The First Paved Street 3:21 Gaston Moves On 4:20 The Colonel 5:37 The House That Did Not Fit 7:32 The Ice Man 10:07 Who Else Was on the Avenue 12:10 The City Arrives 13:48 What Replaced Them 15:31 The Funeral Home 18:22 The Women's Club 19:48 What Survival Cost 22:44 The Street They Left For 24:31 The Street That Nearly Went the Same Way 28:08 What Remains SOURCES Belo Mansion — SAH Archipedia, Society of Architectural Historians https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-DS36 Greene, Herbert Miller — Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/greene-herbert-miller Ross Avenue — Dallas County Pioneer Association https://dallaspioneer.org/historical_articles/ross-avenue/ A. H. Belo House Historical Marker — Historical Marker Database https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=157388 Alexander Mansion Historical Marker, Recorded Texas Historic Landmark 1968 — Historical Marker Database https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=151388 The History of the Alexander Mansion — The Dallas Woman's Forum https://dallaswomansforum.org/alexander-mansion/history/ The Alexander Mansion Still Stands on Ross Avenue, For Now — Dallas Observer https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/the-alexander-mansion-still-stands-on-ross-avenue-for-now-9937770/ History and The District — Swiss Avenue Historic District https://www.sahd.org/history The Beginning of the End for Ross Avenue's Downtown Mansions — Flashback Dallas https://flashbackdallas.com/2015/11/16/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-ross-avenues-downtown-mansions-1925/