before & after

Sherman: And we were cautioned by the state. We were told by the state historic representatives that it was a very, big ambitious task to take on an area this large. They also told us that designation alone was not going to be an overnight fantasy. It wasn’t going to fix all of our problems. It was going to take decades, and we were going to have to maintain constant vigilance, constant monitoring.

Boss: I walked up and down sidewalks visiting with people, explaining the process and getting their signatures on petitions. I would say it would have to be 4050 neighbors that were really involved in the trenches, so to speak, and then there were several that were responsible for submitting all of the data and documentation and everything. It was a big, big job.

loaning because, if you were living in your single-family house, but next door to you was zoned for apartments, there’s no predictability that’ll stay that way. The owner might turn that into slum property, which often happened with those broken-up houses. Banks want predictability. The zoning built in some predictability. But the zoning took signatures. That was quite an undertaking.

“We were there to help stabilize things.”

Roughly 600 structures fill the 164acre neighborhood. The OOCCL had to convince a majority of the property owners to agree to new zoning that would freeze — and ultimately lower — the density in Winnetka Heights. In 1975 the neighborhood became the first in the city to be rezoned. Previously, PDs had been used only on new developments.

Griffith: Of course, explaining this to people wasn’t always easy because they tended to think, “Well, I’m going to get a lot of money for this property sometime. My house is going for townhouses.” That never happened; thank goodness. We had people out working their streets a lot like we did for the historic zoning later on.

Sherman: It was an interesting mix back then. You had some original residents still left, so you had some people in their 80s that welcomed people like us with open arms and were so glad we were there to help stabilize things.

Griffith: Things continued to perk along. We were on some house tours. We treated ourselves kind of like we were a historic district, even though we didn’t technically have that zoning. But then, of course, Munger Place in Old East Dallas got the designation in there somewhere. The plan department had started looking at their neighborhoods in the city. I guess they thought, “If we’re going to hold everything up to Swiss Avenue, that’ll be the only historic district.”

“There was a different mood by that time.”

Five years after Winnetka Heights was granted the PD, neighbors saw a shift in the city’s assessment of what constituted a historic designation. Change had also taken place in Oak Cliff. Preservationists from other neighborhoods joined the OOCCL, allowing the founding Winnetka Heights members to branch off and create the Winnetka Heights Neighborhood Association. These neighbors had a new name and an old dream. It finally came true in 1981.

Griffith: We just barely got that PD approved. Barely. But, by the time we got to having a historic zoning, the council members were loving us. I mean, that was a unanimous decision. They couldn’t wait to give us historic zoning, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have to work hard to show that we wanted it. We still did. I don’t want to take away from that, but there was a different mood by that time.

Sherman: That was back when we didn’t have email. We had phones tethered to the wall. Not everybody had a computer, and if you had one, most people didn’t know how to work [it]. So it was crude.

“Sharing life”

Winnetka Heights reigned as the city’s largest historic district until Junius Heights in Old East Dallas, with more than 800 residences, joined the ranks in 2005. A few years later, one of Winnekta Heights’ key preservationists, Ruth Chenoweth, who passed away in 2006, created a brochure to tell the neighborhood’s story.

Chenoweth co-founded the OOCCL with Griffith, and many years later, when Griffith voluntarily fazed herself out of most neighborhood leadership roles, Chenoweth remained a formidable neighborhood activist. The Historic Preservation League, now Preservation Dallas, awarded her the Lantern Service Award and the Dorothy Savage Award for outstanding achievement in historic preservation. Because she could not contribute her crucial voice to this story, it seems fitting that it ends with an excerpt from her own version:

“Many original front porch swings attest to the close neighborhood ambiance that was generated through sharing life in this very special place.”

On the wide, wooden porch of Griffith’s 99-year-old home, a front porch swing still sways, echoing her dear friend’s words.n