As Perry Heights developed house by house in the 1920s, Lemmon Avenue was the address of some of the grandest homes in the city. Prominent houses and trees lined the avenue from Downtown to Lomo Alto Drive. Lemmon Ave. was named after William H. Lemmon who was a Confederate captain turned real estate developer in …
Continue reading “The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of Lemmon Ave.”
E. Gordon Perry, the founder and developer of the Perry Heights neighborhood, had an ideal neighborhood in mind for his family and built his dream from the ground up. Mr. Perry just moved to Dallas from El Paso after establishing the Perry Motor Company selling Model T Fords since 1915. He also began some housing …
Otto and Norma Beutel married in 1916 and moved into a home on Hood St. in Dallas. Along with Norma’s mother and brother, the household soon added a daughter, Betty G, and a son, Jack Allender Beutel. In 1928, the four members of the young family moved to 4338 Vandelia St. in Perry Heights. Otto …
Luby’s Cafeterias and Dallas go together like peas and carrots. While Luby’s own company history calls San Antonio the birthplace of the Company in 1945, the reality is that there were Luby’s Cafeterias all over the Dallas area for years before then. So why the disconnect? Not surprisingly, the answer lies in family dynamics. Earl …
Paul and Margarita Guerrero and their six children lived in New Braunfels and all played in the family band in the late 1930’s and 1940’s. They played dance-band music and Mexican boleros as they traveled regionally around Texas. The father, Paul Sr. also played trumpet and valve trombone in many top Afro-American bands, such as …
Our beautiful park, as you know, was donated to the City of Dallas by the Craddock family in 1922 when Gordon Perry platted Perry Heights. It was the first privately donated tract of land for the purpose of a public park in the City’s history. The land was just short of 10 acres and it was …
Catherine (“Cay”) and Nathaniel (“Key”) Kolb moved into the house at 4402 Rawlins in 1964 and in it raised three boys and three girls. They had met in Dallas in 1958 while Cay, who had just graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, was working as a buyer for Sanger-Harris and Key had just graduated …
Perry Heights Grocery opened in 1929 just outside the neighborhood down Wycliff on the corner of Hartford boasting of their new refrigeration system. Felix Alfieri was the owner of the grocery which was a two-story building with the grocery on the ground floor and an apartment on the second. The grocery was sold to James …
“Fighting for your neighborhood is just a part of living in this area of town,” said Wendell Patterson, incoming president of the Perry Heights Association, an Oaklawn neighborhood interested in the proposed ordinance. “If you don’t fight, you’ll wake up some morning and find you’re being bulldozed.” February 10, 1986 The proposed ordinance he was …
The house was built in 1924 and almost made its 100th birthday. The house will be demolished due to fire and structural damage over the last few years and a new chapter at that address will begin. Luckily, current Perry Heights residents have purchased the lot and will be rebuilding in 2023. However, for close …
