Atlas Metalworks 1929

When Dallas built the first levees to protect the city center from flooding in the 1920s, it opened up thousands of acres of real estate to development in West Dallas.

Atlas Metal Works was among the first to capitalize on that. The manufacturer’s original 1904 location had been at Young and Marilla, near the current Dallas City Hall. By 1922, Atlas was one of the biggest steel and iron mills in the country, manufacturing culvert pipe, grain storage silos, stock tanks and water cisterns that were shipped all over the country. A new plant on Eagle Ford Road, now Singleton Boulevard, was built in 1929. The original West Dallas complex comprised 40,000 square feet on 7 acres that included its own railroad trackage. It also includes a 1929 office building of concrete tile and stucco. The factory was constructed of Atlas metal to be “fireproof, ventilated and lighted according to modern engineering,” according to reports from the time it was built. Another 11,000 square feet was added during

World War II.

At the time of the move to West Dallas, Oak Cliff developer Leslie A. Stemmons was the company president. But the Storey family was its originator. Millard Storey cofounded the company, and his sons Millard and Boude started working there in about 1908.

Boude Storey eventually became company president, and he made a name for himself as a community leader. A World War II veteran, Boude Storey grew up on Swiss Avenue and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School and what is now Rice University. He served on the Dallas board of education for nine years, including six as president. When the first junior high was built in Oak Cliff, the community easily decided to give it his name.

Storey died at age 78 in 1959, four years after his brother Millard. He had served Atlas for 51 years. His son, also named Boude Storey, ran the company after him.

The plant remains in use as a metal factory, which is still in the same family.

Atlas sold part of its acreage, where Trinity Green Luxury Apartments and Homes is now, a few years ago.

While thousands of new apartment units and luxury townhomes open in West Dallas, Atlas Metal Works stands as an architecturally significant remnant of West Dallas’ industrial past.