Virginia McAlester recently completed a 10-year revision of her book, A Field Guide to American Houses, published by Knopf. The first edition has been used for decades in architecture classes and by restoration architects, historians, preservationists, and owners of old homes.
(Ron Baselis)
A bronze plaque identifies the home's city, state, and national historic designations.
(Ron Baselis)
The sunroom in Virginia McAlester's Swiss Avenue home is her favorite room.
(Ron Baselis)
The library has many books that belonged to McAlester's maternal grandmother.
(Ron Baselis)
Virginia McAlester's modern kitchen was originally a library.
(Ron Baselis)
McAlester renovated the house by installing a modern kitchen in what was originally a library.
(Ron Baselis)
The beams in what is now the kitchen indicate what was originally the back of the house.
(Ron Baselis)
Macalester reflected at the window on the landing above. The windows had been covered with curtains for years by her grandmother and mother.
(Ron Baselis)
Only the photos and light fixtures on the back stairs have changed over the years.
(Ron Baselis)
Find Barnes & Noble Nasher Store Preservation Dallas books
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In the mid-1970s, Dallas' early subdivision known as Munger Place was a modest neighborhood of cheap boarding houses, apartments, and abandoned buildings.
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A “before” photo of the Munger Place house rescued from the wrecking ball by a revolving fund established by preservationist Virginia Savage McAlester and others.
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The “after” photo of the house taken before.
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The “after” photo of the house taken before.
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The “after” photo of the house taken before.
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'After' photo of the Bryan Parkway House, purchased and restored at the instigation of Virginia McAlester (pictured). The house is currently owned by a young family of four. His 6000 block of Bryan Parkway is the only block on the street that remains intact. Other blocks have infill housing.
(Steve Click)
“After” view of the house taken earlier
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Virginia Savage McAlester was fascinated by the detail and beauty of old homes from an early age.
The Swiss Avenue mansion her parents bought when she was six years old had silk brocade curtain panels in the living room and a sunroom with Rookwood tiles.
“The bedroom had hand-pressed flowers in the moldings and a staircase that went up and partitioned off. I thought it was very beautiful,” McAlester said on a recent morning in 1921. said at the dining table in the charming Mission-style home on another Swiss Avenue where her family lives.
She remembers how she visited other homes in East Dallas, including her four great-aunts' home on Munger Place. On her walk to Lipscomb Elementary School, she noted how styles changed in each of her regions.
But most revealing was the trick she used to check the bathrooms of homes she visited with her mother, Dorothy Savage.
“She knew there was something wrong with me and the house because every time we visited, I would ask to go to the bathroom. She couldn't say no. But I knew I was just going to go in there and look at the ceiling, the fixtures, everything. She was so angry because all I had to do was sit in this room and study while she stood there and tapped her foot,” says McAlester, 70.
Dorothy Savage owns the homes of Swiss Avenue (Mediterranean, Georgian, Prairie, Craftsman, Italian Renaissance, Tudor, Spanish, Colonial) along a picturesque boulevard with a park-like median. They worked to save approximately 200 period revival-style mansions. When this district entered its mid-20th century, it went into decline. Her daughter, who looks at joinery, became one of the founders of Preservation Dallas and was recognized nationally as a home building expert thanks to her 1984 book, Preservation Her Dallas. Field Guide to American Housing.
A book that revised the 10-year challenges
Last November, publisher Alfred A. Knopf. field guide McAlester has added contemporary styles to its catalog, including Millennium Mansions and new traditional styles.
The original book “was finished almost in 1940 because I was interested in these areas and historic districts,” she says. “But all of a sudden, ranch homes over 50 years old were eligible to be listed on the National Register. So we started thinking about updating.
“We found that 70 to 80 percent of homes in the United States were built after 1940. That's a huge percentage.”
McAlester devotes a chapter to what many derisively refer to as “McMansions,” which began to emerge in the early 1980s. More respectfully, she calls them Millennium Mansions. According to her, the distinctive elements are the very many shapes of her two-story entrances and roof lines, and as she writes, “These intricate roofs resemble crowns, or more satirical In other words, you can think of it as the future American Roofers Relief Act.”
In the latest guide, new traditional homes come in almost every known style, with McAlester saying, “More different ones are being built now than at any other time in this country's history. If you look back, ranch houses were the norm everywhere. There's nothing like that now.”
Even the international style of geometric glazing is making a strong comeback, she says.
In the months since its publication, McAlester's richly illustrated 880-page work has received positive reviews beyond the worlds of architecture and historic preservation. entertainment weekly rated the book an A and said the “photo-packed home design bible” allows readers to “identify the saltboxes, Dutch colonial buildings, and brownstones that line your street, and learn about the history of each.” I can understand the importance of this.”
A Barnes & Noble online review says the course “opens your eyes to the incredible diversity of our nation's residential architecture as it has evolved and reconfigured over the centuries” and “provides an insight into architectural structure, form, and style.” It is said to be an attractive course.
McAlester said while working on the update, which has been a decade in the making, she gained a new perspective on Dallas' longstanding historic preservation efforts. Despite its reputation as a sprawling development with no sentimentality, she says preservationists had a powerful and immediate impact on the city starting in the early 1970s.
Jim Anderson, Dallas' historic preservation officer from 1984 to 2010, said that just as his mother pioneered the preservation of Swiss Avenue, McAlester also pioneered the preservation of Munger Place and Fair. He said he has been at the forefront of successful efforts to preserve the park.
“Most people at the time thought Munger Place had gone too far,” he says. But McAlester gave the neighborhood a shot in the arm by setting up a revolving fund and buying homes.
McAlester was one of the 11 original members of Preservation Dallas (then called the Historic Preservation League) when it was founded in 1972. When the group set his sights on preserving Munger Place, the first deed-restricted district in Texas developed in 1902, Weiming said Lew, then Dallas' director of urban design, told McAlester and others: Told. “Munger Place can't be a historic district. McAlester said the area simply doesn't meet the criteria for a salvageable area, and the city has written off everything below Beacon.
“It was the National Trust who suggested we set up a revolving fund.”
McAlester was funded by the Historic Dallas Foundation, which was operated with the assistance of approximately 100 volunteers, including Martha Heinberg, Lynn Dunsavage, Dorothy Masterson, and the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, whose members donated restoration plans. served as chairman of
The fund raised money to purchase 23 dilapidated homes on Munger Place. Some were used as boarding houses and some were condemned. Before the fund was established, the group spent a year purchasing a particular home that was not as run down as others and had not been subdivided into rental units, at an asking price of $15,000. I worked to sell it. McAlester says he's probably worth 30 times as much today.
“People knew that 23 homes would also be renovated, so that helped,” he said, and was able to persuade potential urban settlers to buy. But the biggest contributor to neighborhood revitalization was the group's efforts to get Fannie Mae to finance urban housing.
“We were more cutting edge than I expected, but I didn't realize it until I started writing this book,” McAlester says.
McAlester co-authored a book with Dan Savage about the construction of the Swiss Avenue Historic District, established in 1973 as Dallas' first historic district. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has reprinted this book three times.
Dan Savage, who now lives in East Texas, ended up testifying before Congress about the importance of federal loans in such areas. To demonstrate its embrace of its mission, Fannie Mae ran an ad during the 1977 Super Bowl featuring Dunn Savage “flying out of a bank vault and landing on a porch at Munger Place,” McAlester said. says.
Halfway through her research, McAlester learned she had a type of leukemia. She continued to work on the book while undergoing isolated treatment in a Southern California hospital for more than six months. The only problem she faces now is that she can't garden or spend time in public because her immune system has been compromised by the treatment. Otherwise, she says, “I'm fine now.”
McAlester's book is used in university architecture programs as a reference to explain, for example, what distinguishes an Arts and Crafts house from a prairie house, Anderson said.
Additionally, he says, “she's always been open and accessible” to people interested in historic preservation and urban planning issues and is quick to lend her expertise.
“Dallas is lucky to have Virginia McAlester.”
Thomas Kolosek is a freelance writer in Dallas.
