Dwayne took me on a tour of Dallas modernism, showing me examples of buildings that turned up in the survey.

—Christopher Swope

What debates has Dallas had over modernism?

The mayor, Laura Miller, when she came into office, a developer went to her and said what downtown Dallas needs is parks and green space, a place where people can sit and play games and walk their dogs, and she said that's a great idea. And so she and Robert Decherd, who was then head of Belo Corp., came up with ideas for some downtown parks. One of the spots where they wanted to do the downtown park was the block that had the Statler Hilton, and next to it our 1950s library. Both of them were vacant. She was like I hate that building it's the ugliest bldg in town. The library was designed by a local architect, George Dahl. She was like I hate that it's ugly it's horrible. She was out publicly saying this. And we came out and issued our first "endangered" list and put the Statler Hilton on it. She got kind of upset with us. She's actually really good on preservation issues, but she just didn't get the modern stuff.

We started talking to her, and then other people were coming out and saying that really is one of the city's best buildings, or others were saying oh I love that building, I went to parties there. So for a long time we weren't sure what was happening but we knew she'd backed off because the park moved over a block and became one block rather than three blocks. And then she asked us to participate in planning the park, and we did.

I think we've won that battle. We had a tense six months to a year where people were saying I like it I don't like it. Then there's 211 North Ervay. It's a "blue" building, built in the 1950s, designed by a local architect--a really handsome colorful building. Downtown Dallas used to have about four of these, and this is the last of them. I think it's a really fun building. It makes for a bright and dynamic downtown.

This one was on our endangered list the year after the Statler. And the mayor went berserk. She was like, now I can go with the Statler, but this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. She wanted to take the building down and turn it into another park. But in the meantime, a developer stepped up and bought the building and is going to rehab it. I think he does want to paint the blue panels. How much color do you see in your buildings today? You don't see color. You do granite, you do brick, you do concrete, but you don't do that. While it hasn't engendered the love of anybody except for a few of us preservationists in town, it is going to stay.

Aren't some modernist buildings like these a bit hard to love?

Before the 1960s, people thought Victorian was dreadful stuff. There began to be an appreciation of that in the 60s and 70s. Then we graduated, and we began to think about bungalows and the early 20th century in the 70s and the 80s. And then we began to think about Tudor Revival of the 30s, and maybe those buildings are okay. But we're now just reaching the point where we're reaching the 50 year mark, where people are beginning to have enough time and distance from modernism to put it in perspective.

It's an education. Not just for the community and for elected officials, but also for preservationists. A lot of us came out of preservation programs and training at schools of architecture, schools of planning and history departments where history wasn't taught after World War II. We weren't educated about the postwar time. It just wasn't relevant to us. And that's really beginning to change significantly.

It's still easier for an elected official to look at a red brick building and say that's a historic building, we need to keep it. That's easier for them to do than it is for them to look at the Statler Hilton and come up with the same thing. The education just hasn't caught up.

Young people seem to be taking a liking to postwar architecture. Couples are starting to buy up 50s ranch houses and restore them. Why is that?

I think that's because they've got enough of a distance from it that they can see the value. They kind of grew up with it in the background. They weren't all living in these kinds of houses.

We had a case in North Dallas of a 1960s coffee shop being demolished by a 7-11. I was inundated by emails and phone calls from the 20-to-30 set saying this is a great place, it's really cool, why can't you preserve it? And I had to tell them it's not a city landmark so I can't keep them from demolishing it. And they were like why isn't it a city landmark? It's an easy jump for them. The older generation says well that's a nice place but I grew up drinking coffee there, and I just can't see it as equivalent to, say, a Victorian mansion. They don't get it. It's a generational thing.

Preservationists have in the past criticized suburban sprawl and advocated "smart growth" policies that direct growth into older downtowns. Does the postwar period put preservationists in the tricky position of arguing to save the template upon which today's sprawl was built?

People think the 50s was the beginning of sprawl. It wasn't. Robert Bruegmann's book Sprawl makes that clear, that sprawl really began with 19th century streetcars. That really was the beginnings of the spreading out, following transportation lines. The 50s stuff was just a different manifestation of that.

The critical piece that's different is the quantity. The quantity of this stuff versus the quantity from before World War II. It's quadrupled in most parts of the country, particularly in the Southwest and West. So there's a conflict in some peoples' minds. The other side of it is, isn't sprawl part of our history. Even if you don't like it, that doesn't remove it from our cultural history. This is what we are as a nation.

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