History Geek Alert: Who Is S.C. Dessaint And Who Took His House?

Every now and then, I like to visit archive.org, which is a sort of Internet time machine. It lets you look at previous versions of Web sites. And what’s even better, the site’s staff is making a concerted effort to post historical documents online. In this case, today I found this Souvenir of Dallas. It’s definitely worth a look, if you want to see Dallas pre-wrecking ball. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be the one who demolished Dessaint’s spiky mansion (shown center) for fear of impalement at worst or tetanus at best. Still, it makes me sad to think that this city failed to preserve such amazing architecture (not that the new stuff isn’t all right). Meanwhile, the “Dallas News” building (on page 16) is nearly indistinguishable.