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DETERRING DEMOLITION A DAUNTING TASK
Preservation Park Cities lists most architecturally significant historic homes
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CLOCKWISE: 4101 Beverly, an Italian Renaissance-style home built in 1912 and designed by Hubbell & Greene. 3805 McFarlin, a Texas Regional-style home designed by David Williams for former UP Mayor Elbert Williams. 3925 Potomac, a Colonial Revival-style home built in 1921 and designed Hal Thomson for himself. 4809 Drexel, a Neoclassical-style home built in 1914 that was owned by Lee Carpenter and Henry Gilchrist. 4408 St. Johns, a Texas Regional-style home designed by David R. Williams for Warner Clark in 1930. 3444 University Boulevard, a Neo-Classical-style home built in 1916 for SMU Bishop Edwin Mouzon. 4606 St. Johns, a Contemporary-style home built in 1964 and designed by the Oglesby Group. For
more historic homes, visit peoplenewspapers.com. (PHOTOS: COURTESY LARRY GOOD)
By Rachel Snyder
rachel.snyder@peoplenewspaper.com
An approximately century-old home in the 3800 block of Beverly Drive designed by Hal Thomson, one of the most sought-after residential architects in Dallas from 1908-1944, is no more.
Demolished in December, the home is among other homes recently taken down to make way for new ones.
Other recently demolished homes include: • A more-than-century old Prairie-style home in the 4000 block of Miramar Avenue. • One in the 3900 block of Lexington Avenue that was formerly home to Texas Instruments co-founder Cecil Green and wife Ida. • A 1925 Tudor designed by architect Clyde Griesenbeck.
Larry Good, co-founder of the design firm GFF, said 50 of the homes photographed for Great American Suburbs: The Homes of the Park Cities, Dallas published in 2008 are gone.
“It’s just an important home architecturally and is kind of part of the fabric of the community – it’s just too bad to see kind of a landmark like that go down,” Tish Key of Preservation Park Cities said of the Beverly Drive home. “While we can’t legally do anything to stop that because in Texas, the landowner rights are paramount and technically our group or anybody for that matter can’t stop an owner from doing what they want to do, but we can raise awareness about these important houses, and that’s what our efforts are.”
Good, who also wrote A House For Texas about the historic Elbert Williams house in University Park recently bought by Jan and Trevor Rees-Jones to preserve, said the group met with city and town leaders to discuss the topic.
“It’s all about the high value of the land,” Good said. “Just in the past decade or so, the value of the land in the Park Cities has really outstripped the value of the physical improvements that are on the land. Therefore, when somebody is buying a lot in the Park Cities, the existing house is less of a factor.”
“People just want to live here, and they’re willing to pay a great deal for the land. Back in the ‘80s, we saw a great deal of the housing stock in University Park demolished. The houses were more affordable, they were smaller, they weren’t of architectural significance, and we saw half of University Park rebuilt in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. Well, now that condition has moved to Highland Park, where people are now buying lots on Beverly, on Lakeside Drive, and Armstrong Parkway, and in the Volk Estates in University Park, where the architecture of the house is of significance and the history of the house is extremely important, and we’re starting to lose those houses, and that’s really what’s changed recently.”
In hopes of turning the tide to the extent they can, Preservation Park Cities has compiled a list of the ‘top 100’ homes in the Park Cities, began a dialogue with city and town officials, and continued to educate about historically and architecturally significant homes.
“We’ve got to build more of a culture of appreciation of the history and the significance of these houses,” Good said.
Some Highland Park ISD parents have decried what see as a lack of rigor in materials used to teach reading. Their complaints include that seventh and eighth graders are no longer
reading traditionally-used books like these. (PHOTO: RACHEL SNYDER)
The Ruckus About Reading Curriculum
HPISD parents, district leaders mull effectiveness of ELA materials
By Rachel Snyder
rachel.snyder@peoplenewspapers.com
Highland Park ISD is among school districts facing scrutiny on – and re-evaluating – how students are taught reading and phonics.
Some Highland Park ISD parents have raised concerns about the Lucy Calkins’ (of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project) curriculum for teaching reading and writing in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Per the website for the curriculum, in Units of Study, teachers lead classes in minilessons before students move on and apply the skills from the minilesson to independent reading, reading with a partner, or working with the teacher one-on-one or in small groups.
“Our youngest child is an eighth grade TAG student, and the decline in the rigor and effectiveness in reading instruction compared to what her three older siblings received in standard classes is astounding,” said Rebecca Holmes in a winter meeting.
Holmes and other parents also decried what they say is a lack of books traditionally read in seventh-and eighth-grade classes, like The Giver and To Kill A Mockingbird.
EdReports, a nonprofit that reviews instructional materials for things like alignment to Common Core State Standards and text complexity, found the texts included in the materials in the Units of Study curriculum for grades K-2 “aren’t appropriately complex for grade level and do not build in complexity over the course of the year,” and the material for grades three to five “do not meet the expectations for text quality and complexity and alignment to the expectations of the standards.”
HPISD Assistant Superintendent for Education Services Lisa Wilson said the state adopted new English/Language Arts TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) state standards effective the 20192020 school year.
“So in the ‘18-’19 school year … we took the new TEKS, and we had a committee formed – over 30 people, most of them, though were teachers – to review materials that they wanted to recommend for adoption to support that new curriculum and so they did all the research, went to the Region 10 showcase and selected the Units of Study, but instead of just doing the Units of Study in reading, which quite frankly when you read all the social media about the people who don’t like Lucy Calkins, often they’re looking at just the Units of Study in reading without the additional support,” Wilson said.
“So, we adopted the Units of Study in reading, writing, and phonics because we knew we wanted to implement explicit phonics to begin in the fall of 2019. In addition to that, we adopted materials for vocabulary, spelling, handwriting, just kind of a whole group of materials to support our ELA curriculum,” she continued.
District officials also note the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions that began in the 2019-2020 school year and say they’re monitoring data, including literacy assessments, to ensure students meet grade-level expectations.
“We want to make sure that … students are able to master those and that the resources we have are doing what they need to support our teachers as they’re designing instruction for kiddos,” Wilson said. “We’re watching data very closely, and … when you look at our data compared to those around us, we had the slightest dips in some areas, but even in third-grade reading, we actually improved.”
The school board also has an education services ELA subcommittee including Bryce Benson, Maryjane Bonfield, Stacy Kelly, Wilson, and Superintendent Tom Trigg that met to compile the concerns raised and discuss possible resolutions.
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