THUMB AWARD OUR FIRST OFFICIAL RUIN?

Thumbs Up to Mary Vernon, an art history lecturer at SMU, for promoting a twofold idea of how to save the historic Trinity United Methodist Church. The first idea is to turn the crumbling shell of the church on the small triangular piece of land at Pearl and McKinney into the city’s first “official ruin.” The second proposal is to make it a memorial to Dallas police officers who have died in the line of duty. The church, which was virtually destroyed by arson in 1981, has gone through a series of owners, each with a plan to restore the church as office space. None of the plans have worked out. Vernon and her peers at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture came up with the ruin idea because of the location of the church-at the foot of the skyscrapers in downtown Dallas-and because it could serve as a monument to the Oak Lawn homes that were razed to make room for the development of downtown’s bulging waistline.