Most of the Dallas skyline is populated with modernist and post-modern structures, although the city’s signature building remains the Beaux Arts-styled Magnolia Hotel. On the roof is a symbolic oil derrick and the neon sign of the flying horse Pegasus, the logo of the Mobil Oil Company. Down Commerce Street, power brokers have checked into the French Renaissance-designed Adolphus Hotel for over 100 years. The Majestic Theater, draped in baroque decorations, is a showcase for the performing arts. The Dallas Union Station is a Neoclassical showcase, handling commuter and intercity railroad lines. The original Neiman Marcus department store is the last of its kind operating in downtown Dallas.
Big Tex is the 55-foot tall Fair Park talking icon that greets visitors to the State Fair of Texas each September. The West End Historic District contains Dealey Plaza, made infamous as the location of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Across the street, the Texas School Book Depository is another landmark tied to the dark events of 1963 as the location from where assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took the fateful shot. Nearby, the sprawling Dallas County Courthouse, fashioned from red stone in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, is now a local history museum.
Homes in Dallas’ 27 real estate districts are primarily single-family properties, totaling 224,012. The housing market also includes 6,627 townhouses. Potential apartments for sale number 34,555 units. There are 8,839 multi-family properties and 2,919 apartment buildings. Commercial properties for lease or sale total 18,122. Another 681 properties are classified as industrial.
The City of Dallas Urban Land Bank manages a vacant lot inventory of 27,319 properties, putting developable lots up for sale and offering developable property under market value to non-profit groups.
Dallas services its 386 square miles of real estate with the nation’s largest light rail system, including the only subway line in the Southwest. The Dallas Streetcar Project is adding additional track to the system with $58 million of ongoing improvements. The Dallas Area Rapid Transit authority manages local and express lines into most of the Dallas suburbs from the downtown core. The Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is the 10th busiest in the world. Dallas Love Field and Dallas Executive Airport provide additional connectivity.
The rapidly-expanding Dallas housing market is served by a network of 337 public schools and 89 private schools. The School for the Talented and Gifted has been named the #1 public high school in the United States by U.S. News & World Report every year since 2012. The city boasts 38 colleges, including those that split their campuses with suburban Dallas. Southern Methodist University is the most celebrated of the undergraduate colleges in the Metroplex.
Stemmons Corridor, a commercial stretch of I-35 in northwest Dallas, is home to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center with 3 degree-granting medical schools and 4 affiliated hospitals. The health care complex feeds half a dozen major hospitals across the city with newly minted health care professionals.
A Dallas resident has a 1 in 143 chance of being a victim of a violent crime, compared to a 1 in 243 chance in the state as a whole. Property crime rates are more comparable: a 1 in 28 chance in Dallas and a 1 in 35 chance in Texas.
The Dallas Cowboys football team is so popular that they’re known as “America’s Team.” Fans save some of their passion for the annual college football Cotton Bowl and high school games on Friday nights. Vendors at the massive State Fair of Texas are famous for deep frying anything edible.
Texas barbecue is a gastronomical religion and Dallas is the home of Dickey’s, America’s largest barbecue chain. Others swear by Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse and its 7 Dallas locations.In northern Dallas, the Arts District is America’s biggest, headlined by the Dallas Museum of Art, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and the Winspear Opera House.
Fair Park bundles history, culture and recreation and is the flagship destination in the 406-property Dallas park system. The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden draws visitors year-round to its 19 named gardens.
