{"nrhp_refnum":"78002918","name":"Westend Historic District","other_names":["See Also:Sanger Brothers Complex","Dallas County Courthouse"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Bounded by Lamar, Griffin, Wood, Market, and Commerce Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Dallas","county":"Dallas County","state":"TX","lat":32.78019118800003,"lon":-96.8062347288919,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1978-11-14","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Community Planning and Development","Landscape Architecture","Commerce","Transportation","Politics/Government","Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A historic district of about thirty city blocks at the western edge of downtown Dallas, Texas, bounded by Lamar, Griffin, Wood, Market and Commerce Streets and the MKT Railroad tracks. It holds warehouses, offices and government buildings, mostly built in the first decades of the 1900s.","why_significant":"The district preserves evidence of Dallas's founding and of its early twentieth century growth as a rail-based trade and commerce center. Its warehouses, many built for Illinois farm-implement firms, brought Chicago School and commercial architecture to Dallas. It also contains the county government complex and has the city's highest concentration of early non-residential buildings.","narrative":"Dallas's Westend is a district of roughly thirty blocks on the western edge of downtown, laid out on the original mid-1800s street grid beside the MKT railroad tracks. Its red brick warehouses, six to eight stories tall, were built mainly in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Many served Illinois farm-implement companies such as John Deere, Parlin and Orrendorff, and Southern Rock Island, which brought Chicago School design to the city. The 1901 Southern Rock Island Plow Company Building later became known as the Texas School Book Depository. Later office and wholesale buildings of the 1910s and 1920s rise to as many as twelve stories and use terra cotta trim. At the center stands a county government group: the 1891 Richardsonian Romanesque courthouse, the criminal courts building and the 1922 Records Building. A reconstructed log cabin of city founder John Neely Bryan sits in Founders Plaza. The district records how rail transportation shaped Dallas commerce and architecture.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Hubbell and Greene; J.A. Padgett; H.A. Overbeck; Peterman and Overbeck; Lang and Witchell; A.L. Sparks; Philip Johnson (JFK Memorial)","architectural_style":"Chicago School and commercial style, with Richardsonian Romanesque, Neo-Classical and Gothic Revival government buildings","criteria":[],"status_note":"Mostly altered but still intact in character; a few intrusive modern buildings, including a bus station, a parking garage and a college annex under construction, detract from it. Some buildings are occupied and others are unoccupied.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:19.572314-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/67/9716/40971667/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_TX/78002918.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/78002918/63e2e645de-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/78002918/63e2e645de-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Drumguy8800 at English Wikipedia","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_End_Historic_District,_Dallas.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Drumguy8800 at English Wikipedia</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_End_Historic_District,_Dallas.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/40971667","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_End_Historic_District_(Dallas)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7985089"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/texas/dallas-county/westend-historic-district-78002918/"}