matt weinstein preservation dallas

from modern.dallas ed.42 // feb 2023

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With a flurry of events to the Blue House, a Dilbeck and the Joppa Historic Walking Tour, we usher in the recent addition of Matt Weinstein as the Programs Associate of Preservation Dallas.

Matt holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography from UC-Berkeley, where he studied American cultural landscapes under architecture historian Paul Groth. Matt also studied City Planning at MIT’s Department of Urban

Studies and Planning, where his research focused on the movement toward economic revitalization and adaptive reuse in historic industrial cities in Massachusetts.

“It was the end of August of 2008, and I drove into town late at night from Texarkana in a Subaru with North Dakota plates. My first impression of Dallas was, quite literally, the High-Five. And I had never, in my life, seen anything like it. As I’ve told this story to Dallasites over

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Since moving back to Texas to start work at Preservation Dallas this past fall, Matt became fluent in parts of Dallas that weren’t even on his radar 15 years ago. This time around, he landed in Oak Cliff, a few blocks from the Kessler Theater, amid a small sea of well-tended craftsman homes, just off the historic commercial strips of Davis Street and Jefferson Boulevard. Working at the Wilson House, he quickly got to know the grandeur of Swiss Avenue—both here on the Wilson Block, and in the Peak’s Suburban and Swiss Avenue Historic Districts up the street. Within a few weeks, he had visited at least a dozen older neighborhoods around the city—some protected, others not—and was struck by the many multitudes that Dallas contains. Time and distance even helped me grow to develop an appreciation for the suburban cityscape of North Dallas, and the many distinctive treasures it holds, modernist and otherwise—some truly hidden away, others hiding in plain sight.

Now that he had come to appreciate all of the historic charm that Dallas still has to offer, finding a historic home for himself here became important. For the past year and a half, he had lived in a third-floor walk-up efficiency studio in a converted 1893 SRO hotel, a block from the Connecticut River in the historic North End of Middletown, CT. What my recent digs may have lacked in grandeur, they made up for with historic character, and a real sense of place. He couldn’t bear the thought of coming to Dallas to work as a professional preservationist, only to live in a drab soulless apartment here. I was worried.

In a moment of inspiration, Matt typed ‘75223’ into Zillow, and found just a single rental listing in his price range in the zip code: the left-side unit in a stunning 115-year-old double-shotgun house, just around the corner from the Santa Fe Trail. The owner is Ryan Withrow a young preservation-minded architect, and owner of the firm Object & Architecture, who renovated the house himself, and lives with his wife in the parallel unit. For me, it was love at first sight.

“I have been thrilled to wake up there every morning. Among the many historic structures, I’ve gotten to know in Dallas these past few months, my own little piece of Dallas history is my favorite.

Just a few miles south of the High-Five, Matt feels fully immersed in a vibrant, historic Dallas that I once didn’t even know existed. In a city infamous for bulldozing its past, I’ve discovered that there’s still plenty left to preserve and cherish, and a committed community of preservationists dedicated to doing the work.

“I feel privileged to be living and working among you, and look forward to getting to know this city and y’all, better and better in the months and years to come.”

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