Do you know about Cochran Heights? It’s okay if you don’t. I lived in Dallas for almost a decade before I stumbled upon it, and that discovery only occurred when I moved just blocks away from the small but special neighborhood. The non-M Streets side of Henderson Avenue is a bit of a hodgepodge right now. There are towering contemporary townhomes erected (seemingly) every day alongside longstanding (and occasionally dilapidated) cottages. You can’t go far between Henderson and Bennett Avenue without running into a construction site. But if you make it to Mission Avenue, you’ll sense a shift — it’s as if you’ve entered an entirely new neighborhood.
Which, of course, you have. Cochran Heights is comprised of just 240 homes, bounded by Henderson Avenue, Mission, Lee Street, and Pershing, and is one of the largest concentrations of designs by architect Charles Dilbeck, known for romantic, almost whimsical takes one everything from Tudor homes to Colonial Revivals. But the work Dilbeck did during the 1930s in Cochran Heights is utterly charming, and representative of the architect’s mission to offer middle-class Americans a home that thought outside the red brick box.
The Cochran Heights neighborhood first opened its doors to the public in 2016, and is welcoming back visitors a second time, on April 6, for their ‘Uniquely Urban’ home tour, in the hopes of raising money to convert an abandoned alley in the area into a pedestrian walkway. Head to our slideshow for a sneak peek at the Austin stone cottage, the modern new build, and the Dilbecks you’ll find within the hidden neighborhood.
