GREENVILLE’S TOP SPOT

DESTINATION

THE NAME TOP POT came from an accident involving a vintage neon sign that hung above a Seattle-area Chinese Restaurant.

Brothers Mark and Michael Klebeck came across an amazing find: a used neon sign that once hung above Top Spot Chinese restaurant. They didn’t know what they might use it for, but they had to have it. When they loaded the sign in the back of the truck and drove off with it, they heard a loud “thud” from the truck bed. The “S” fell off while they were driving, and “Top Pot” was born. But they still had to develop the concept, so the sign sat rusting in their parents’ backyard for four years before they finally put it

Top Pot Doughnuts

2937 Greenville Ave.

Hours: MondayFriday, 6 a.m.–noon, and Saturday-Sunday, 7 a.m.-1 p.m. toppotdoughnuts.com to use.

During that time, the brothers experimented with recipes that were passed down from their grandmother.

“One recipe in particular was a yeast-raised dough that had a slight sweetness to it,” Mark says. “This could be fried on the stove top, and it was fantastic with jam fillings as well as a variety of simple glazes and icings.”

From there, their recipes improved until they were ready to launch their café concept. When it was time to branch out of their home state of Washington, they knew Dallas was their next stop. They opened three locations in the Dallas area: one in Preston Hollow, one on Greenville Avenue and one in Richardson.

The Top Pot in our neighborhood is more of a grab-and-go than the one in Preston Hollow. Doughnuts are shipped from the other Dallas location because space is limited. Coffee is primarily French press since they couldn’t fit an extensive coffee bar, but that complements our neighborhood’s affinity for artisanal coffee.

Not much is different between the Dallas locations and the ones in Seattle. Dallas stores use coffee beans roasted in small batches in Seattle. Dallasites do have particular tastes. Blueberry is a year-round flavor in Dallas because it is so popular, but it’s a seasonal flavor in Washington.

“It’s interesting the popularity of the doughnuts are different in Seattle than they are down here,” district manager Karla Fife says. “In Seattle, maple bars are really popular, and down here? Not so much. Maple’s not a thing in Texas? I don’t know.”

So if you pop into Top Pot, be sure to order a blueberry fritter like a real Texan.

What To Try

The chai spiced doughnut is available only in Dallas. Pair it with a cup of coffee for breakfast or an afternoon pickme-up.

Simply Good Pie

Check out East Dallas’ own little slice of heaven with your friends!

Enjoy a slice with a cup of White Rock Coffee.

Take home pie by-the-slice & whole pies.

Tues-Sun 11am - 9pm

Friday & Saturday 11am-11pm

Menu updated daily!

Check us out online or on Facebook.

Racist housing policies impacted East Dallas, but the city wants to change the landscape

East Dallas is a patchwork of the haves and the have-nots. Some are comfortable with public schools, and others drive great distances for private schools. McMansions, neo-modern and historic homes mix with apartments, some high-end and others low-income.

This past May, the Dallas City Council unanimously approved its first comprehensive housing policy, which could increase affordable housing throughout the city and, ultimately, better integrate Dallas. The policy hopes to address residential income gaps by providing new and stable housing, assisting property owners and establishing mixed income communities.

This civic action is an attempt to reverse federal practices dating back to the ’30s, which reinforced the residential segregation that exists to this day.

STORY BY WILL MADDOX | ILLUSTRATION BY JYNNETTE NEAL

Many of Lakewood’s most iconic homes were built in the 1920s, in an architectural style that has transcended time. Can you guess it right away? Some clues: brick and/or stucco walls; a façade dominated by one or more frontfacing gables; a steeply pitched roof that has eaves that may plunge almost to the ground; massive chimneys often topped with decorative chimney pots; and, the most distinctive characteristic of all, decorative half-timbering.

Congratulations if you guessed Tudor, a style with a long and twisty history. It was the final evolution of Medieval architecture in England, during the Tudor period from 1485 to 1603. In the U.S., a medley of Tudorera styles was combined in a building heyday that lasted from the 1890s to the 1940s, especially in affluent suburbs. Why? The materials used for Tudor-style homes were expensive — brick, slate, stone — which telegraphed the financial success of their owners.

In Lakewood and everywhere, Tudor homes are highly desirable. They are popular in movies, too. One famous example? Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, featured in movies and shows including Gilmore Girls and The Fabulous Baker Boys . Other notable Tudors are, in Michigan, the 60-room manor of Edsel and Eleanor Ford and, in Newport, Rhode Island, the late-1800s Fairholme, the oceanfront summer cottage — at 24,000 square feet — of philanthropist Fairman Rogers.

We live here, too.

Why is our neighborhood so

segregated?

“People like to think that segregation just sort of happened,” says Miguel Solis, a Dallas Independent School District trustee who chaired a task force on housing policy that made recommendations to the city. “Segregation was manufactured by people, and particularly by policymakers, for racist reasons.”

In the wake of the 1929 Great Depression, the federal government rolled out all kinds of New Deal policies and agencies to try to prevent such a financial crisis from happening again. One was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), which introduced the practice of apparent racial and cultural value of a community to determine its economic value,” according to the “Mapping Inequality” project from the University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab. It was nearly impossible for these residents to acquire a home loan, making it more difficult for communities of color to accumulate generational wealth.

The practice of “redlining,” as it became known, officially was outlawed in the late 1960s. But U.S. Census reports from 2009 — four decades later — showed that typical black and Hispanic households had just 6 and 8 percent, respectively, of the median wealth of typical white

WHAT IS “REDLINING”?

The systematic denial of housing services to specific residents, often based on race and ethnicity. The practice was introduced in the early 1930s with the creation of the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), whose “residential security” informed which mortgage loans would be insured by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Such practices were outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, but their effects persist today.

HISTORIC HOME OWNERS’ LOAN CORPORATION GRADES

1930-1940

“BEST”

These new homogenous areas populated by “business and professional men” were in demand, in good times and bad.

“STILL DESIRABLE” appraising homes for mortgage loans. As part of this, HOLC recruited loan officers, developers and real estate professionals in nearly 250 cities, including Dallas, to color-code neighborhoods’ credit worthiness and risk.

These “residential security” maps were then used by the Federal Housing Administration, HOLC’s successor agency, to determine which residents were “safe” bets for banks and lenders. The better a neighborhood’s rating, the more likely its potential homeowners could acquire a mortgage loan.

The HOLC recruits looked at everything from terrain to public amenities to determine ratings. But as one former FHA appraiser told writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his June 2014 Atlantic story, “The Case for Reparations,” the top ratings were reserved for areas without “a single foreigner or Negro.”

Neighborhoods with people of color almost always were colored red, or “hazardous” for lenders.

“Real estate appraisers used the households.

Dallas was no exception. Our modern demographics, from property values to school performance, reflect HOLC’s 1937 residential security map of Dallas, demonstrating the lasting impact of these policies.

Parts of Old East Dallas and the Baylor area were redlined, according to the HOLC maps. What is now Lakewood, the M Streets and Wilshire Heights were rated “best,” while areas to the south were designated “still desirable.” Moving further south and east toward Downtown, the Mount Auburn area was rated “declining.”

Swiss Avenue, according to the 1937 redlining map, is a “best” spot in a sea of “declining” East Dallas properties. The historic district’s old housing deeds still read, “This lot shall be used for residential purposes only and by white persons only,” NBC 5 reported in 2010. Race restrictive covenants like this are unconstitutional and unenforceable today, but their presence reveals the intentions of early developers.

These areas had “reached their peak” but were expected to remain stable for many years.

“DEFINITELY DECLINING”

In general, these were sparsely populated fringe areas that typically bordered black neighborhoods.

“HAZARDOUS”

These low-income neighborhoods, populated by “Negros” and “foreigners,” were considered to be the worst for lending, hence the term “redlining.”

Elementary Boundries

Sources: University of Richmond

“Mapping Inequality” project, The Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston

To create their “security maps” in the 1930s, HOLC recruited loan officers, developers and real estate appraisers in nearly 250 cities, including Dallas, to color-code credit worthiness and risk for neighborhoods within large metropolitan areas.

MOCKINGBIRD (STONEWALL) ELEMENTARY

RED LINE RATING: Mostly best

TEA ACHIEVEMENT SCORE: 93

WHITE STUDENTS: 59%

LOW-INCOME STUDENTS: 19%

PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT OF HOMES SOLD IN 2017: $267.42

LAKEWOOD ELEMENTARY

RED LINE RATING: Mostly best, some desirable

TEA ACHIEVEMENT SCORE: 94

WHITE STUDENTS: 77%

LOW-INCOME STUDENTS: 7%

PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT OF HOMES SOLD IN 2017: $273.04

GENEVA HEIGHTS (LEE)

ELEMENTARY

RED LINE RATING: Mostly desirable, some declining

TEA ACHIEVEMENT SCORE: 73

WHITE STUDENTS: 27%

LOW-INCOME STUDENTS:

58%

PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT OF HOMES SOLD IN 2017: $245.35

LIPSCOMB ELEMENTARY

RED LINE RATING: Mix of declining and desirable

TEA ACHIEVEMENT SCORE: 72

WHITE STUDENTS: 9%

LOW-INCOME STUDENTS: 84%

PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT OF HOMES SOLD IN 2017: $212.72

Sources: Realtor Ron Burch of Coldwell Banker, Texas Education Agency 2018-19 school profiles, Homeowners’ Loan Corporation 1937 maps, Dallas ISD boundry maps

MOUNT AUBURN ELEMENTARY

RED LINE RATING: Mostly declining

TEA ACHIEVEMENT SCORE: 60

WHITE STUDENTS: 2%

LOW-INCOME STUDENTS: 92%

PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT OF HOMES SOLD IN 2017: $109.16

What redlining means today

When today’s demographics are measured against those redlining maps from nearly 80 years ago, there are similar patterns. The areas that the FHA considered “hazardous” are still the areas that have the highest levels of poverty, the largest concentrations of minorities and the lowest property values.

“Everything that comes with a hyper-concentration of poverty, such as healthcare and education, created a set of compounding generational effects that many still live with today,” Solis says.

Segregation still exists in East Dallas. Gentrification means that lower income communities are priced out of areas where they have lived and sent their children to school for generations. In the Mount Auburn neighborhood, where homes historically have been passed to family members or sold for less than $300,000, developers are purchasing lots and building modern homes priced over $600,000.

Opportunity Dallas launched

IS THE PAST PRESENT?

Read the notations of loan officers, developers and real estate professionals who created Dallas’ 1937 Home Owners’ Loan Corporation “residential security” maps and decide for yourself — do their descriptions of East Dallas neighborhoods in 1937 reflect today’s realities?

“BEST”

Lakewood was “considered one of the highest type residential districts of Dallas, containing several homes costing as much as $60,000. This area is well platted and contains considerable natural beauty.”

Forest Hills boasted of “deed restrictions, location, type of construction and natural beauty” leading the map makers to believe that “present building activity will in all probability rapidly increase.”

In the M Streets area, from Central Expressway to Abrams and Mockingbird to Vanderbilt, homes were “protected by deed restrictions which have several years yet to run. It will continue to be desirable and sales activity will continue to be good.”

Swiss Avenue was a “highly restricted addition” whose homes “could be classed as edifices, occupied by well to do families.”

“STILL DESIRABLE”

North and west of Swiss, in what is now Vickery Place, the Belmont Addition and Lakewood Heights, the homes east of Skillman were considered the “best part of area.” The premiere suburban neighborhood of the early 1900s, Munger Place, was by 1937 considered the “worst part” of the area. The overall neighborhood was “still desirable” even with “apartment houses scattered over [the] entire area.”

LAKEWOOD 94

MOCKINGBIRD (STONEWALL) 93

GENEVA HEIGHTS (LEE) 73

LIPSCOMB 72

MOUNT AUBURN 60

Hollywood-Santa Monica, Parks Estates (Abrams Brookside) and Junius Heights received points for being proximal to a grade school (Lipscomb Elementary), city parks, a community business center (Lakewood Shopping Center) and the Lakewood Country Club, but because of the age of homes, “heavy traffic on Gaston Avenue” and “encroachment of apartment houses,” they were “still desirable” but not “best.”

“DEFINITELY DECLINING”

The Mount Auburn neighborhood, adjacent to HollywoodSanta Monica, was “definitely declining,” with its “mixed type of construction” and “encroachment of commercial and industrial establishments.”

Most everything else in Old East Dallas, including Peak’s Addition southwest of Fitzhugh and Ross, Belmont Park southwest of Henderson Avenue, and the neighborhood around Woodrow Wilson High School, was “definitely declining.” The properties were “old” and in “poor” repair. There were “industrial plants” and “railroad tracks through part of [the] area,” plus “many large apartments houses of varying degrees of desirability.” last year with a mission to “promote greater economic mobility and prosperity by tackling concentrated poverty and segregation.” The organization created a task force to analyze housing policies in Dallas and make recommendations to the city.

Most areas around White Rock Lake and other northern parts of what is now East Dallas hadn’t been developed into neighborhoods yet.

To find your home on the 1937 HOLC maps, visit lakewood.advocatemag.com.

One of the task force’s goals was to establish a policy to enhance housing for low-income households and break the cycle of generational poverty.

The task force included representatives from real estate, nonprofits, government, neighbors and developers.

“We had folks who were focused on the bottom line and Section 8 voucher holders in the same room talking about this issue,” Solis says.