In doing so, what we discover is that Dallas has long been defined by a desire for transformation. In the following guide, we attempt to unearth that lost city. The result of this impetuous preoccupation with building and rebuilding is a city left with few physical markers of a past that, though invisible, continues to shape the present. One of the most remarkable aspects of this city’s history is how, in its relatively short 178-odd years of existence, so many neighborhoods were born, evolved, destroyed, replaced, erased again, and remade anew once more-all in the name of striving toward some realization of Dallas’ ideal form. Ironically, that obsession with the new is one of its oldest and most enduring characteristics.ĭallas’ transience describes not only the inhabitants of the city, but also its physical form. Ever since John Neely Bryan planted his cabin on the banks of the Trinity River, Dallas has been a city focused singularly on the unspoiled promise of the future, not the inheritance of the past. Perhaps that is because not many people stick around long enough to learn the history, or those who do tend not to show much interest in it. Dallas has always been a transient city, and that lack of rootedness has often led to the misconception that it is a city without much history.
