Whether or not you are “from here,” I think you’ll agree that summer is not Dallas’ finest hour. In fact, come August—with the withered St. Augustine and the promise of the blazing concrete of September—it’s easy to get more than a little cranky. For those with imagination and the means, there is a simple answer: Get out of town!
But, as our editors point out in our “Home Away From Home” feature beginning on page 80, as much as Texans love to travel, for us, the pull of “home” is irresistible. As a result, market analysts tell us that when we want to get away, we’re just as likely to call a real estate agent as a travel agent. In fact, our passion for second homes has grown so much that Dallas is now one of the leading second-home buyer markets in the country. Our reputation, as it happens, has been long in the making. Since the early 20th century, gentrified Dallasites have had ranches. We then created lakes so we could have lake houses, and of course we joined the race to colonize Aspen and Sante Fe. Now we own second homes all over the world! And whether our weekend homes are mini-palaces or funky ski cabins or weary lake houses, they hold for us a kind of magic. In second homes, we throw out our conventions—any petty sense of what-would-the-neighbors-think—and we create a space that truly reflects who we are and what we care about.
Of course there is nothing funky or weary about the houses we chronicle in this dazzling issue of D Home. Armchair travel from South Africa to New York over to Sante Fe and then on to Lake Whitney, the Hill Country, and East Texas. You’ll see design ingenuity combined with “just us” homeowner touches. I hope you have as much fun touring these second homes as our editors had putting the story together. Enjoy this special issue, and let me hear from you.
