Westend Historic District

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.