Preservation Dallas Takes Intown Neighborhoods Online

You’ve imagined your dream home. Now punch ils specifications into a computer and let Preservation Dallas find it for you.

Set up in April 1995, the organization has rooms full of information to help Dallas newcomers and current residents find their perfect neighborhood in a place that does not have big-money developers pushing it-the “in-town” area, bordered by Loop 12.

The information available is as broad as a watercolor map of the neighborhoods and as specific as a computer program, allowing users to type in a price range and preferred area.

For example, type in that you want a house in Northeast Dallas costing between S 100,000 and SI 50,000. and the computer comes up with six suggestions. Walk across the room and peruse a binder with photos and information about Lakewood Heights. Deep Ellum. Vickery Place, Hollywood Heights or any of the 154 neighborhoods represented. Call the neighborhood up on a touch-screen and you can hear a neighbor tell you why she loves it.

This is all ground-breaking work in a preservation business. No other American city has a neighborhood database this extensive, says Catherine Horsey, executive director of Preservation Dallas. Other cities have taken notice and are visiting to see what they can learn from the program.

To Horsey, there are two approaches to historical preservation-standing in front of the bulldozer that’s about to tear down a historical building or working to put people into that building so the bulldozer never has to.

“The whole purpose of this is to strengthen the neighborhoods, and that helps preserve them,” she says. “We’re trying to enable neighborhoods to become historical by allowing them to be around that long.”