Perry Heights People

The Perry Heights Power Couple

The beautiful craftsman home at 4316 Rawlins

Arch and Patsy Swank moved into this large craftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home at 4316 Rawlins with over 6,000 square feet built in 1944 with a huge front porch to accommodate their family of four children in the Spring of 1958. They were a Perry Heights super couple. Both were known to be smart, cultured, progressive-minded, with a great sense of humor. Arch jokingly referred to his home as a mid-continental, crude style, probably because it was not in the style of his modernist esthetic. He and Patsy did enjoy living in the home, staying there through the 1980s, and raising their children Before he purchased the home, he designed the home across the street at 4335 Rawlins for Miss Frances Thompson in 1954. The Swanks loved that the home had plenty of room for their family and there were several families with children in the neighborhood at that time.

Arch, Patsy, and the couple being shown a 1954 Theater schedule. The home at 4335 Rawlins that Arch Swank designed in 1954 for Miss Frances Thompson, who became his neighbor four years later.

Arch was an award-winning architect with his own firm that designed Wynnwood and Preston Center shopping centers, the Texas Instruments complex, as well as beautiful modernist residential homes in Dallas. Early in his career, he designed and oversaw the Little Chapel of the Woods in Denton which was always his favorite project. Patsy was an award-winning journalist for The Dallas News before starting her family. She was credited for alerting Life Magazine about the existence of the Zapruder film after the Kennedy assassination. She was then an arts reporter at KERA and later had her own show, “Swank in the Arts” where she was the writer and producer.

Little Chapel in the Woods, Denton that Arch Swank designed

Arch and Patsy had strong moral standards when it came to their community. Arch was credited with refusing to redesign Parkland Hospital in the 1950s with a separate entrance for Black patients as well as insisting the charity ward was air-conditioned, which was not in the original plan. He and Patsy also opposed the City of Dallas’ plan to enlarge Turtle Creek Boulevard into a six-lane thoroughfare for faster access to downtown and formed the Save Turtle Creek Committee which led the effort to oppose this widening plan. Ultimately, the boulevard between Blackburn and Routh streets was widened, but with a larger median, and saving more mature trees, while giving the community more say in its design. The Swank’s involvement caused Arch’s firm to be fired from all future projects by Neiman Marcus since Stanley Marcus was a supporter of the plan. Arch and Patsy had the courage to speak up when nobody else would. Their commitment to high ethical and moral standards continues to make life a lot better for the rest of us.

Patsy served on the board of directors of the Dallas Art Magnet School, co-founded Aids/Arms, one of the first public AIDS services in Dallas, and served on that board for six years. She also initiated one of the first arts magazines in Dallas. Arch served on the Allied Arts of Dallas, Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, The Charter League, and The Dallas Jazz Society. Arch passed away in 1999 and Patsy passed away in 2006.

The Most Fabulous Party Planner in Dallas

Rawlins Dallas — 4322 Rawlins as it stands today

The most fabulous event planner in Dallas!

Perry Heights was home to one of the most sought-after men for decades. He lived at 4322 Rawlins with his life partner, Earl E. Jones in the ’50s and ’60s.

In the 1960s, no one who was anyone gave a party in Dallas without calling Harry Bullard. It was said, “If they couldn’t get Harry, they just wouldn’t have a party”. He opened his floral shop on Fitzhugh Avenue in 1951 and began decorating Dallas homes and ballrooms with his floral displays and greenery. Generations of Park Cities debutantes bowed amid his floral arrangements and later carried his bouquets down the aisle at their weddings.

Celebrities would contact Bullard when they came to town to buy his services. Joan Crawford even sent him a note telling him that she had never seen such beautifully exquisite displays in her life.

Harry Bullard was born and raised in Chickamauga, Georgia, and always had a love of flowers. In 1946, he moved to Dallas and began working with other florists. Mrs. E.L. DeGolyer of the Dallas Arboretum fame noticed his talent and ask him to landscape her 48 acres estate. Mrs. DeGolyer’s trust and recommendations encouraged him to open his own shop and event planning business after he was called on to do the biggest debutante ball of the year in Dallas.

His weddings were lavish. One wedding had 5,000 gardenias floating in a pool and another had 700 roses just for the bride’s table. He once turned Idlewood into a medieval castle for Troy Post’s daughter’s debutante party. Bullard was also flown to Acapulco and other fantastic destinations to decorate homes and plan parties of Dallas’s elite.

Harry Bullard and his partner maintained a beautiful home on Rawlins. It was the envy of the block. Harry also owned an antique shop and was the president of the Texas State Florist Association. He was helpful to local garden clubs, often allowing them time in his shop selecting flowers. Harry later retired to Lake Tawakoni.

Perry Height’s Last Known Debutante

In 1936, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Irwin Payne hired architect, Ralph Bryan, to design their home at 4524 Rawlins Street in the style of a Louisiana plantation home. They toured several Louisiana plantation homes to collect what Mr. Payne wanted in his own home. The site was at the corner of Rawlins and Hawthorne, right across from Craddock Park and the Perry Estate, and completed in 1940. Robert I. Payne was a theater executive and ran many of the city’s movie theaters, such as the Esquire Theater on Oaklawn, which were wildly popular at the time. The couple lived in the home with their daughter, Mildred (Mimi) Payne. Mrs. Dorothy (Volk) Payne was the daughter of the famed George Volk, founder of the retail family who had shoe stores all over Dallas. The Volk department store on Elm street was one of the most successful shoe stores in the nation. The Volk store built a new store at Elm and St Paul in 1930 and became the first completely air-conditioned department store in the nation. They then opened several branches including one in Highland Park Village and one in Oak Cliff at Wynnewood. One of the eccentricities of the Volk store was a cage of woolly monkeys, a pond of turtles, and an aquarium. Harold Volk also developed the Statler hotel in 1950.

Mimi’s debutante ball was on December 9th, 1949 at Brook Hollow Country Club. 500 guests joined her candlelight debut dance listening to The Billy Mayo orchestra followed by a midnight supper. White flowers and hundreds of hurricane lamps illuminated the terrace. A pre-party cocktail soiree was held by the Puckhaber’s in their Maple Terrace residence, decked out in bird of paradise flowers, for a lucky 50 special guests. Several parties were held in her honor after her ball, including an elaborate Chinese breakfast where guests wore silk robes in a decorated home on Highland Drive and had a feast of Chinese delicacies.

Mimi later married Sawnie Aldredge, Jr. (son of a Dallas Mayor) years after Sawnie opened The Aldredge Book Store in 1947, which sat at 2800 McKinney Ave at Worthington in an old house built in the 1880s. Sawnie’s father was the youngest mayor of Dallas in the 1920s and, during his term, hired the first city planner and drove the KKK out of town.

After Sawnie’s death, Mimi married SMU law professor, Joe McKnight, in 1975 and remained married to him up to his death in 2015. Joe McKnight was the principal architect of the Matrimonial Property Act, which granted Texas women equal legal rights after marriage in the 1960s. Mimi had two children with Aldredge, Amy, and Trip. She also had several step-children after marrying McKnight. Mimi passed away in 2017.

A Dairyman and Minnie

In the 1930’s and 1940’s. the owners of the home at 4403 Vandelia were William and Minnie Dieterich. William Herman Dieterich was originally from Bremen, Germany, and came to Texas when he was 18. Wilhelmina (Minnie) Augustina Gunther was born in Chicago shortly after her parents emigrated from Germany. She married W.H. Dieterich in Nebraska in 1887.

After the family moved to Dallas, William bought 144 acres of farmland at Midway Road and Walnut Hill. William established the farm as a dairy, with Jersey cows. He delivered bottled milk to his customers on his way to his day job at the Sanger Bros. department store in downtown Dallas where he worked as the building engineer. His young sons helped him on the farm as the dairy business grew. They also sold eggs and farm-made sausage. The family also survived the flood of 1908 when the Trinity flooded the area and they spent days rescuing people from the floodwaters with his rowboat and horses.

With most of their children out on their own, William and Minnie eventually sold the farm and bought a home in the new neighborhood of Perry Heights to be closer to downtown. William’s son, Arthur F. Dieterich, studied at West Point and Texas A&M where he studied agriculture. He played football at A&M and was inducted into the university’s Hall of Fame. He was on the 1922 team that played in the first Cotton Bowl in which the 12 man legend was born. He then worked at a dairy cooperative in El Paso for a brief time to learn the dairy business.

Arthur and his wife, Louise, eventually returned to Dallas and, with the help of his parents, established Hermosa Farm Dairy in 1928 at the corner of Midway Road and Forest Lane. The dairy provided Perry Heights and the Park Cities with milk deliveries by horse-drawn wagon and then later milk trucks until 1947 when city’s development and high taxes forced them to sell. They found an 800-acre farm in Dorchester, Texas, and changed from retail to wholesale dairy products. Arthur also served in various roles with the American Dairy Association of Texas. In his later years, Arthur often served as a judge at the State Fair of Texas in dairy competitions. There is a fascinating oral history given by Arthur and Louise where they talk about life at the Hermosa Dairy, running the dairy during the Great Depression and their family backgrounds. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc306934/

Shirley, the granddaughter of William and Minnie, and the daughter of Arthur & Louise Dieterich visited her grandparent’s former home on Vandelia in 2011 to tell us her memories of her grandparents living there and the celebration of their 50th year of marriage in 1943. Shirley’s daughter, Nancy, provided these pictures of the family and the house in Perry Heights.

Shirley was also great, great-niece of Julien Revershon (eponym of the park off Maple Ave) Shirley was well respected for her work as a botanist and received numerous awards for her study of Native Texas plants of the North Texas region.

William died in 1947 and Minnie moved a few years later to live with Arthur and Louise at their farm until her death.

Edward Gordon Perry, Sr

E Gordon Perry grew up in a little town called Woodville, Tennessee, about two hours east of Memphis. As a young man in 1908, he moved to El Paso and was the first businessman in El Paso to begin selling Fords in 1912 (the model T type) along with his brother-in-law. Three years later he began selling the first Dodges in Texas with General Pershing’s army and Pancho Villa among his clients. He then moved his family to Dallas and opened a Dodge dealership, eventually having a showroom at Pacific and Pearl, downtown. The dealership became the 2nd largest Dodge distributor in the country.

He also developed Perry Heights as a unique neighborhood. He created a realty company with investors and purchased the land. As a part of the deal, the seller donated a portion of the land to the city as a city park running across most of the development. The donation of land and what is now Craddock Park was the first privately donated park in Dallas. He had Fooshee and Cheek, architects layout the plats to provide wide streets with no overheard wires and alleyways to keep the neighborhood attractive, with several trees to provide a canopy of green. He wanted the neighborhood to be diverse in the sizes of the homes, yet restricted the building materials to brick, stone, tile, and stucco with no wooden or frame homes allowed. Rawlins owners needed to spend at least $10,000 on their homes, which needed to be two-story dwellings, Hall owners needed to spend at least $6,000 on their new home, and Vandelia owners needed to spend at least $5,000 on their home according to the abstract of the development dated August of 1922.

Edward Gordon Perry Sr. had a wife, Melvina Vandelia Perry, and two children. His daughter, Vandelia, and his son, Edward. Gordon Perry Jr. both went to SMU. Edward Gordon Perry Jr. became a successful inventor and businessman who served as the chief research engineer for Texas Instruments. He was also a co-founder of Recognition Equipment, Inc, (REI). He is best known for inventing the first commercially viable Retina Character Reader. (For more information please visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gordon_Perry_Jr. )

Perry was trying to create a neighborhood for people in various life stages and economic brackets for a more diverse neighborhood. He truly believed that homeownership was important for a community to thrive. He also built his family home in the center of the neighborhood and built a large playground for his children and encouraged the neighborhood children to play there as well. He named one of the newly created streets Vandalia after his wife’s middle name and daughter’s first name. His home was said to cost $75,000 and included a pool and tennis court and was just across Hawthorne from the park where the Park Place townhomes are now.

In addition to Perry Heights, he was very involved in the YMCA of Dallas. He was the director from 1922 to 1947 and raised one million dollars from other business owners to open three branches of the Dallas YMCA in 1928. He was also chairman of the social welfare Association committee on inter-organization cooperation that worked with Dallas businesses in providing opportunities and funds for those less fortunate.

Perry was also the superintendent of the First Methodist Church School for 16 years and a member of the board for SMU for 15 years. Perry was also the president of the USO for two years during WW II and was active in other civic and church activities. He is quoted as saying “I have had a lot of privileges in my life and I feel very humble about it.” He felt that service to his community was of utmost importance.

He and his wife moved to San Angelo in 1947 to be close to his grandchildren and died in 1952 just shy of his 66th birthday.

Perry Heights Features

This page will feature various people and homes that have made our neighborhood full of history, culture, and the friendly urban oasis it has become.

If you have a story about one of our houses or past resident, please send us the story to be featured.