February 17-20, 2017: A Visit to San Antonio
	December 29, 2016 - January 16, 2017: Our Winter Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2017

This weekend, Guy has come up from San Antonio to spend a few days with us, and we are happy to have him. We are going to do a few of the things that are pretty frequent with us- the Arboretum and the Arts District for two of them- and just give Guy a chance to vegetate away from all his responsibilities in San Antonio. As it turned out, we didn't take our cameras to the Arboretum, but we did take them downtown to the Klyde Warren deck park.

Getting down to the deck park over Woodall Rogers Freeway is not hard at all; we make almost the same trip every time we go to the Symphony. My guess is that it is about three miles as the crow flies. We found a parking place on Akard Street near the park without any difficulty.

The concept of building a deck park over Woodall Rodgers Freeway may have originated in the 1960s when Dallas Mayor J. Erik Jonsson decided to recess the freeway below grade, with the city streets crossing the canyon that was created.

Many years later in 2002, the idea resurfaced in the real estate community and in 2004, the Real Estate Council provided a $1 million grant to fund feasibility studies and provide staff support during the incubator stage. Other donors came on board, leading to the formation of the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, the organization that led the project from design to completion. Construction on the deck began in October 2009 and the park celebrated its grand opening in October 2012.

The park deck is a feat of engineering and design. It had to be at street level yet preserve clearance for the highway below. An ingenious arrangement of more than 300 concrete beams and a large number of support members have created a solid deck for the park. They also created a series of gigantic "planter boxes," suspended over the freeway, that are large enough that small trees can be planted in them.

This afternoon, we are just going to walk around the park area to show it to Guy and take some pictures of the downtown Dallas skyline. We began in the southwest corner of Klyde Warren Park, generally looking northeast towards the Dallas Arts District and the skyscrapers in and near it.

Hall Arts Tower (under construction) and Museum Tower

Hall Arts Tower, which will be 20 stories when finished, is right across from the Myerson Symphony Hall. It will be an office tower, and there will be a "sculpture walk" along its north side. Other buildings in the complex will open through 2020.

Museum Tower, Chase Tower, and San Jacinto Tower

Chase Tower is a 55-story postmodern skyscraper- third tallest in the city and 12th tallest in Texas. It has Deloitte LLC as its major tenant, and also houses the Dallas Petroleum Club, a business and social club located on the 39th and 40th floors. The building is uniquely designed, with a curved glass top and a 6-story hole in the center of the building near the top; many Dallasites call this structure the "Keyhole Building".

San Jacinto Tower is a 33-story, three-module skyscraper with a million square feet of office space. The top floor was the fictional location of the "Oil Barons Club" from the TV series Dallas; exterior shots of the skyscraper were used frequently on the show.

While not as tall as Chase Tower, Museum Tower is much more interesting- and controversial. This 42-story skyscraper was completed in January, 2013, becoming the second-tallest all-residential building in Dallas (by 40 feet).

The Museum Tower's glass has reflected an undesirable glare into the nearby Nasher Sculpture Center, whose architect Renzo Piano had specifically designed its roof to direct appropriate indirect sunlight into the galleries, based on the arc of the sun across the sky. Artist James Turrell considers his work Tending (Blue) to be effectively destroyed by the glare, and the museum has closed the interior of the sculpture to the public at his request. Peter Walker, the landscape architect who designed the Nasher's sculpture garden, has characterized the glare as "an attack on the garden and on the building and on the art." As of 2015, Museum Tower's owners had decided they are not responsible for the glare created by the tower, although there are ongoing efforts to find ways to minimize the glare without destroying the views from the residences. Stay tuned.

Looking North Across Klyde Warren Park

We began our picture-taking at the southwest corner of the park, with views looking generally north. All of what you see at left is constructed on a deck over the eight-lane Woodall Rogers Freeway. One of the attractions of the park is that it is adorned with many native Texas plants, and there is a small garden at the southwest end of the park with many of these.

Walking north, one passes a kids' play area, a reading and games area sponsored by The Dallas Morning News; the area has tables and chairs and racks containing newspapers and magazines and a selection of games like chess and checkers. The Klyde Warren Park is truly an urban oasis, and it was constructed without taking up any space that could have been used for some other purpose.

Here are a few of the pictures we took in the park:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The landscape designer created different “rooms” throughout the 5-acre park. The sustainable landscaping includes 37 native plant species and 322 trees, hiding an active freeway with a beautiful green area. There are open lawns, rows of trees, a children's playground, a performance stage, an outdoor library, water features and areas for a restaurant and for a series of upscale food trucks that provide service all day long.

The Cumberland Hill School

For most of the rest of the afternoon, we just wandered around the area around the park, looking at the downtown scenery- buildings old and new. One landmark we saw was the Cumberland Hill School.

This was one of the first brick schools in the Dallas system, the Victorian building having been built in 1888 on the site of a pre-Civil War school and organized by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Dallas. In early decades this school drew pupils from several areas, with many arriving each day in Hansom carriages. In later times, the studen tbody came from many different nationalities, giving rise to the school's nickname- "The Melting Pot School". From 1963 to 1969 the building housed a progressive vocational center, teaching construction trades to citizens of the area.

There was a bronze plaque on the side of the school; you can just see it in the picture above. I transcribed the last paragraph from that bronze plaque, and as I did so, I noticed a couple of errors- the most prominent of which was the name of the type of carriage in which some students were said to have arrived. I could understand the error if someone had dashed off a placard in pen, but when you have a bronze plaque etched or molded you would think that someone would have noticed the error. Anyway, if you'd like to check it out, the plaque is in the scrollable window above, left.

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For a good part of the afternoon, we just walked here and there using Klyde Warren as our focal point. This winter afternoon was typical for Dallas- bright sunshine, but that wan, winter sunshine that is so effective in lighting up scenery that is tall enough to reflect it. That's why we took so many pictures of downtown Dallas skyscrapers; it was an ideal time to do so.

It's not necessary for me to name each of the buildings (aside from those already mentioned) for you to appreciate their architectural beauty. If you aren't a fan of post-modern architecture, then you probably won't like the appearance of downtown Dallas. But if you do, you might want to flip through the pictures we took.

To make that easy, I've put them in the slideshow at right. As usual, use the little arrows in the lower corners of each slide to go from one to another, and check the index numbers in the upper left to see when you've been through them all.

Enjoy having a look at downtown Dallas!

We did go into the Dallas Museum of Art for a while; it is nice that, save for special exhibits, the museum is free. This allows you to go in and spend just a short time, if you wish, looking at a gallery or two, without having the feeling that you are wasting money if you don't spend all day. We've taken lots of pictures in here before, but today the only one Fred took was of a sculpture entitled "Two‑Piece Reclining Figure" by Henry Moore.

Fred did take one other picture outside the museum, of myself and Guy, with the museum's iconic sculpture, "Ave" by Mark di Suvero (a bright red piece made of steel girders) in the background.

The last stop we made was in the courtyard at the corner of the L-shaped Beck Consulting office building a block down Ross from the Museum of Art. There's a fountain in that courtyard that we hadn't visited in a long time, so we thought we would show it to Guy and take some pictures:

We did other things with Guy while he was here, but these were the only pictures from his visit.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	February 17-20, 2017: A Visit to San Antonio
	December 29, 2016 - January 16, 2017: Our Winter Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2017