Dallas is home to the best collection of 20th century homes in the country. Highland Park is associated with the best homes in Dallas. How did Spanish Revival style homes come to represent the finest homes in Highland Park – the best of the best – and evoke the excellence of Highland Park?
The story of how Spanish Revival became Highland Park’s iconic style is rooted in the history of the people and the architecture of Highland Park. In the 1920s, architect and Architectural Record editor Lawrence C. Kocher did a survey of 571 architect-designed country houses across the nation from 1923 to 1925. He found that the vast majority of homes designed in this period – 60% to 75% – were American Colonial and Georgian. Tudor made up about 10%, Spanish Revival made up 15% and Prairie, Craftsman and other styles made up the remaining 10%.
While Spanish Revival style homes were more popular in Texas and California, Georgian and American Colonial Revival style homes still comprised most of the homes built in the early 1920s in Highland Park. However, the most expensive, stylish and luxurious homes in Highland Park were Spanish Revival. In my opinion, the aspirational admiration in the 1920s for Spanish Revival homes was strong for several reasons.
One reason is that the Spanish Revival style had become very popular in California, which influenced the well-traveled tastemakers of Dallas. Architectural exhibitions at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego catapulted the interest in Spanish Revival style. The glamorous communities in California, like La Jolla, Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes and Santa Barbara, adopted this style. The stylish and expensive Spanish Revival style, well suited to homes in California, also translated well to the most luxurious and stylish homes in Highland Park.
Also, the tastemakers and money-makers in Dallas had business ties in California. In the 1920s, Neiman Marcus sourced many of its luxury goods and materials from California and cultivated top designers in California. Hollywood stars would travel to Dallas to shop at the Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas. Karl Hoblitzelle, who famously developed the Interstate Theatre Company, spent a great deal of time in Hollywood and California. He was the Texas pipeline for Hollywood movies. You can see the California architectural influence in the theaters he developed like the one in Highland Park Village designed in the Spanish Revival style.
G.B. Dealey had many publishing and media connections in Los Angeles as well, as a longtime publisher of The Dallas Morning News. He was also on the board of governors of the American City Planning Institute in 1920-21 and the National Municipal League in 1923-24 and other national planning associations looking at the aesthetics of cities.
Hugh Prather and Edgar Flippen, developers of Highland Park, also embraced the popular and avant-garde Spanish Revival style. They embarked on a tour of Spain and California to learn more about the Spanish Revival architectural style and brought what they learned to the design of their innovative, inward-facing luxury shopping center in Highland Park. Further following their fascination with the Spanish Revival style, they sent the architects of Highland Park Village, Marion Fooshee and James Cheek, on a two-month trip to Europe, Mexico and California to immerse themselves in Spanish Revival architecture. Fooshee and Cheek first traveled to Barcelona, which was hosting the 1929 World’s Fair, then on to Seville and other European locations. Their exploratory architectural journey concluded with cities in California: Palos Verdes and Rancho Santa Fe, known for their Spanish Revival architecture, and Santa Barbara, which was rebuilt emphasizing Spanish Revival architecture after the earthquake in 1925. Fooshee and Cheek came back to Dallas and designed the Spanish Revival style Highland Park Village that emerged as the architectural epicenter of Highland Park. Ultimately, Highland Park Village became one of the most luxurious shopping centers in the country. Also, a few years earlier in 1924, prominent architects Lang and Witchell designed Highland Park Town Hall in the Spanish Revival style in the center of Highland Park.
Ten years ago, Highland Park doubled down on Spanish Revival style when the city retained architect Larry Boerder to design a 15,000-square-foot addition to the original Town Hall building in the Spanish Revival style. This further cemented the Spanish Revival style as the central aesthetic theme of Highland Park. Yet again emphasizing the importance of Highland Park Town Hall, which includes the library, fire station and police headquarters, all were designed in the inviting Spanish Revival style, and surrounded by parks, creeks and the Highland Park swimming pool.
Another reason Spanish Revival style homes were so appealing to the wealthiest Dallas homeowners in the 1920s: Highland Park Spanish Revival homes were customarily designed by society architects who had taken the European tour, sketching along the way, and who were trained in the Beaux-Arts classical style of architecture. Beaux Arts was not just more luxurious, ornate and refined. These Beaux-Arts architects were trained to follow the procedure of design rather than just adhere to a more generic style of Georgian and Colonial homes. Their training emphasized unity, proportion, rhythm and scale, all of which Spanish Revival architecture is known for.
An additional reason the cultured families of Dallas were drawn to Spanish Revival architecture was the emergence of architects such as David Williams, the godfather of Texas Modernism, and his protégé, architect O’Neil Ford. David Williams returned from designing residential communities in Mexico to build homes in Dallas. His first homes in Dallas expressed his modernism in Spanish Revival styled homes like the one he built for his brother, Dr. Raworth Williams in 1926. The Spanish Revival style allowed David Williams to pay attention to the tenets of modernism that he was interested in – orienting the house with its loggias, verandas and continuous walls in relationship to the environment and connecting the house with nature. David Williams emphasized individual artisanship. He understood that stucco walls cooled the home, barrel tile roofs reflected the sun, and open loggias captured cool breezes. While the upper-middle class homeowners in Highland Park in the 1920s tended to conform to the more conventional Georgian and Colonial Revival styles found in the colder climates of the Midwest and the East Coast, the sophisticated and self-confident wealthier homeowners recognized that the Spanish Revival style was more environmentally friendly and suited to Texas’s climate. Thick stucco walls kept the home cooler in the hot summers. Deep barrel tile roofs reflected the harsh Texas sun. These Dallas homeowners could better enjoy the outdoors, with rooms opening to loggias and verandas, taking advantage of the fact that Dallas was seasonally pleasant much of the year. The arched openings, iron detailing and elaborate tile patterns of Spanish Revival style created a luxurious finish while maintaining a functional aesthetic. Homeowners one hundred years later are still enjoying homes with barrel tile roofs, iron detailing, and rooms that open to loggias and balconies capturing summer breezes.
Homebuyers frequently tell me that, if they cannot find a modern home, they would like a Spanish Revival or Mediterranean style home because these styles, like modern homes, emphasize open spaces, sunlight and a visual relationship with nature.
In 2025, the affluent homebuyers in Highland Park continue to gravitate to Spanish Revival style homes with Mediterranean style influences including the greater use of stone and marble. One stellar example is 4400 Belfort Place, which is considered the finest new home in Highland Park, and has been designed in a Spanish Revival and Mediterranean style.
Drive down the beautifully landscaped Armstrong Parkway, one of the most iconic streets in Dallas, and you will see 4400 Belfort Place gracefully sited on a broad Highland Park one-acre lot. Except for some evidence of fresh landscaping and the trace remnants of fresh construction, this Highland Park estate home looks as though it has been in place for 100 years. It reflects the best of Highland Park’s past and reassures us that Highland Park will continue to be the nation’s most beautiful neighborhood. Notice the pattern of windows and floor plan with open connecting rooms which allows even more sunlight than most modern homes. The exterior and interior finishes are intricate, exacting and visually interesting, while the hand-troweled stucco exterior is refined, relaxed and inviting. These luxurious finishes define functional spaces that allow one to happily live and entertain. The finest Highland Park architectural style in 1925 remains the finest Highland Park style in 2025.
