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Dallas in Texas

Friday, 26 October 2018 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika
Category/Kategorie: General Reading Time:  9 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Dallas is a city in Texas. It is the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, which is the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the United States. The city’s population ranks ninth in the U.S. and third in Texas after Houston and San Antonio. The city’s prominence arose from its historical importance as a center for the oil and cotton industries, and its position along numerous railroad lines. The bulk of the city is in Dallas County, of which it is the county seat; however, sections of the city are in Collin, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties. The city has a population aof 1,3 million. Dallas is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. Dallas is known for its barbecue, authentic Mexican, and Tex-Mex cuisine. Famous products of the Dallas culinary scene include the frozen margarita.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Elm Street while his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. The upper two floors of the building from which alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy, the Texas School Book Depository, have been converted into a historical museum covering the former president’s life and accomplishments.

Dallas’s skyline has several buildings over 700 feet (210 m) in height. Although some of Dallas’s architecture dates from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the notable architecture in the city is from the modernist and postmodernist eras. Iconic examples of modernist architecture include Reunion Tower, the JFK Memorial, I. M. Pei‘s Dallas City Hall and Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Good examples of postmodernist skyscrapers are Fountain Place, Bank of America Plaza, Renaissance Tower, JPMorgan Chase Tower, and Comerica Bank Tower. Several smaller structures are fashioned in the Gothic Revival style, such as the Kirby Building, and the neoclassical style, as seen in the Davis and Wilson Buildings. One architectural “hotbed” in the city is a stretch of historic houses along Swiss Avenue, which has all shades and variants of architecture from Victorian to neoclassical. The Dallas Downtown Historic District protects a cross-section of Dallas commercial architecture from the 1880s to the 1940s (List of Dallas Landmarks).

Central Dallas is anchored by Downtown, the center of the city, along with Oak Lawn and Uptown, areas characterized by dense retail, restaurants, and nightlife. Downtown Dallas has a variety of named districts, including the West End Historic District, the Arts District, the Main Street District, Farmers Market District, the City Center business district, the Convention Center District, and the Reunion District. “Hot spots” in this area include Uptown, Victory Park, Harwood, Oak Lawn, Dallas Design District, Trinity Groves, Turtle Creek, Cityplace, Knox/Henderson, Greenville and West Village.

East Dallas is home to Deep Ellum, a trendy arts area close to Downtown, the homey Lakewood neighborhood (and adjacent areas, including Lakewood Heights, Wilshire Heights, Lower Greenville, Junius Heights, and Hollywood Heights/Santa Monica), historic Vickery Place and Bryan Place, and the architecturally significant neighborhoods of Swiss Avenue and Munger Place. Its historic district has one of the largest collections of Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Prairie-style homes in the United States. In the northeast quadrant of the city is Lake Highlands, one of Dallas’s most unified middle-class neighborhoods.

South Dallas, a distinct neighborhood southeast of Downtown, lays claim to the Cedars, an eclectic artist hotbed, and Fair Park, home of the annual State Fair of Texas, held in late September and through mid-October. Southwest of Downtown lies Oak Cliff, a hilly area that has undergone gentrification in recent years, in neighborhoods such as the Bishop Arts District. Oak Cliff was a township founded in the mid-1800s and annexed in 1903 by the city of Dallas. Today, most of the area’s northern residents are Hispanic. The ghost town of La Reunion once occupied the northern tip of Oak Cliff. South Oak Cliff’s population is a mix of African American, Hispanic, and Native American. South Side Dallas is a popular location for nightly entertainment at the NYLO rooftop patio and lounge, The Cedars Social, and the famous country bar Gilley’s. The neighborhood has undergone extensive development and community integration. What was once an area characterized by high rates of poverty and crime is now one of the city’s most attractive social and living destinations. Further east, in the southeast quadrant of the city, is the large neighborhood of Pleasant Grove. Once an independent city, it is a collection of mostly lower-income residential areas stretching to Seagoville in the southeast. Though a city neighborhood, Pleasant Grove is surrounded by undeveloped land on all sides. Swampland and wetlands separating it from South Dallas will in the future be part of the Great Trinity Forest, a subsection of the city’s Trinity River Project which is planned to restore and preserve wetlands, newly appreciated for habitat and flood control. Dallas is surrounded by many suburbs; three enclaves are within the city boundaries – Cockrell Hill, Highland Park, and University Park.

The Arts District in the northern section of Downtown is home to several arts venues and is the largest contiguous arts district in the United States. Notable venues in the district include the Dallas Museum of Art, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center home to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Dallas Wind Symphony, The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, and the Nasher Sculpture Center. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science, also downtown, is a natural history and science museum. Designed by 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Thom Mayne and his firm Morphosis Architects, the 180,000 square feet facility has six floors and stands about 14 stories high. Venues that are part of the AT&T Dallas Center for the Performing Arts include the Winspear Opera House home to the Dallas Opera and Texas Ballet Theater, the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre home to the Dallas Theater Center and the Dallas Black Dance Theater, and City Performance Hall. Also, not far north of downtown is the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University. In 2009 it joined up with “Prado on the Prairie” for a three-year partnership. The Prado focuses on Spanish visual art and has a collection of Spanish art in North America, with works by Picasso, Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Murillo, Zurbaran, Ribera, Fortuny, Rico, de Juanes, Plensa and other Spaniards. These works, as well as non-Spanish highlights like sculptures by Rodin and Moore, have been so successful of a collaboration that the Prado and Meadows have agreed upon an extension of the partnership.

The former Texas School Book Depository, from which, according to the Warren Commission Report, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963, has served since the 1980s as a county government office building, except for its sixth and seventh floors, which house The Sixth Floor Museum.

The American Museum of the Miniature Arts is at the Hall of State in Fair Park. The Arts District is also home to DISD‘s Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a magnet school which was recently expanded. City Center District, next to the Arts District is home to the Dallas Contemporary. Deep Ellum, immediately east of Downtown, originally became popular during the 1920s and 1930s as the prime jazz and blues hot spot in the South. Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and Bessie Smith played in original Deep Ellum clubs such as the Harlem and the Palace. Today, Deep Ellum is home to hundreds of artists who live in lofts and operate in studios throughout the district alongside bars, pubs, and concert venues. A major art infusion in the area results from the city’s lax stance on graffiti, and a number of public spaces including tunnels, sides of buildings, sidewalks, and streets are covered in murals. One major example, the Good-Latimer tunnel, was torn down in late 2006 to accommodate the construction of a light rail line through the site.

Like Deep Ellum before it, the Cedars neighborhood to the south of Downtown has also seen a growing population of studio artists and an expanding roster of entertainment venues. The area’s art scene began to grow in the early 2000s with the opening of Southside on Lamar, an old Sears Roebuck and Company warehouse converted into lofts, studios, and retail. Within this building, Southside on Lamar hosts the Janette Kennedy Gallery with rotating gallery exhibitions featuring many local, national, and international artists. Current attractions include Gilley’s Dallas and Poor David’s Pub. Dallas Mavericks owner and local entrepreneur Mark Cuban purchased land along Lamar Avenue near Cedars Station in September 2005, and locals speculate he is planning an entertainment complex for the site. South of the Trinity River, the Bishop Arts District in Oak Cliff is home to a number of studio artists living in converted warehouses. Walls of buildings along alleyways and streets are painted with murals and the surrounding streets contain many eclectic restaurants and shops.

Dallas has an Office of Cultural Affairs as a department of the city government. The office is responsible for six cultural centers throughout the city, funding for local artists and theaters, initiating public art projects, and running the city-owned classical radio station WRR. The Los Angeles-class submarine USS Dallas (SSN-700) will become a museum ship near the Trinity River after her decommissioning in September 2014. She will be taken apart into massive sections in Houston and be transported by trucks to the museum site and will be put back together.

Read more on City of Dallas, Dallas Tourism, Southfork Ranch, Wikivoyage Dallas and Wikipedia Dallas (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

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