I Remember… Let’s Celebrate Highland Park’s 100th!
October 23rd, 2013 | by ml
I remember - Celebrating 100 Years of Memories in Highland Park, TX from extraordinary homes on Vimeo.
Video / Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty
Highland Park celebrates its 100th anniversary at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27, with Centennial Sunday – a Community Birthday Party Celebration at Lakeside Park. A centennial landmarking for Philadelphia Place begins at 3:30 p.m.
No reservations are necessary for the party – and you want to be sure to get there. This is one of the final events in a yearlong celebration of this special community.
Here are some Highland Park memories from Robbie Briggs of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty:
A hundred-year-old tree, a hundred years of history, parks, style, culture, and a hundred years of extraordinary lives—that is what we are celebrating…a hundred years of Highland Park, Texas.
Beginning with the purchase of the land by John S. Armstrong in 1907 and the dreams of his two young developer sons-in-law, Edgar L. Flippen and Hugh E. Prather Sr., who began development of a residential community to be called Highland Park. Aptly named, since Wilbur David Cook, the urban planner who had laid out Beverly Hills, Calif., laid out the city plans, retaining over 20 percent of the area for beautiful parks. The first two lots were sold in 1909, and, as they say, the rest is history.
In 1912, Mr. Flippen and Mr. Prather lured the Dallas Country Club to Highland Park to attract wealthy residents to their new development.
In 1913, the town was incorporated by a vote of its 500 residents and so this new neighborhood began. Into the ’20s, some of the most remarkable homes of every style were designed by great architects like Hal Thomson, Foshee and Cheek, Anton Korn and later the ingenious Charles Dilbeck. In 1931, the first planned shopping center in the United States was built with a unified architectural style and stores facing in toward an interior parking area, all developed and managed under single ownership. Today, this Highland Park Village is the Rodeo Drive of Dallas.
We all share memories of this great neighborhood we call Highland Park, from Sunday picnics along Exall Lake feeding the ducks, riding bikes to Skillern’s in the village to get a malt and read comic books on the floor, or going to the record shop to listen to music. We put pennies on the railroad track where the Dallas North Tollway is today, or walked the rails across Lemmon to spend Saturday afternoon at the Delman Theater, if you had already seen a Disney movie such as “The Parent Trap” in the Village. We climbed the cedar trees in Versailles Park and were stung by wasps, stomped to hear the echo in the Gazebo, caught tadpoles in the pond and trapped fireflies at night.
Both my father and my children all went to Bradfield. Of course, Dad climbed out the window the first day of school and ran home, much like the first time I spent the night at my friend Webb’s and snuck out in the middle of the night because I was hot and couldn’t sleep, to ride my bike furiously home in the dark. We toilet-papered our neighbor’s trees, trick-or-treated from house to house, swam and played hours of tennis, football and catch in the parks, we fished Turtle Creek for catfish and bream, crawfished Hackberry Creek, snuck into the maze of underground culverts, and caught the bus from a Highland Park corner to ride to Fair Park to see the Automobile Exhibit and Big Tex each October. I can remember saying goodbye to my brother at the Highland Park train station as he went off to camp in Wisconsin for eight weeks. Just across the tracks, we dined at the Highland Park Cafeteria and named the presidents while waiting in line, and drank Coke floats at the Highland Park Pharmacy.
Highland Park is its people, its school, the amazing police and fire departments, the libraries, the parks, the trees, the stone bridges, Turtle Creek, the boulevards, the Village, nearness to downtown, the convenience to Love Field, the sidewalks, the pets, the children, the Christmas lights and carriage rides, and all that this amazing community brings.
In 1913, Mr. Flippen and Mr. Prather were glad to sell a prime lot for $377. Today, we can see that same lot sell for close to $200 a square foot. Then or now, you get what you pay for, life in the Bubble, life in Camelot, life in Highland Park. And the residents say it’s worth every penny. Happy 100th , Highland Park. You still look marvelous.
Click here for more information about the birthday party.
Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty is Dallas’ luxury real estate leader, with more than 200 agents in five offices located throughout Dallas-Fort Worth and access to the global Sotheby’s network, including more than 11,000 agents in more than 650 offices worldwide. CEO Robbie Briggs independently owns and operates Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty. For more information on escapes and second homes, ranch and land, and luxury homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth region and beyond, go to briggsfreeman.com.
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