Dallas’ Fair Park needs restoration.
But it is more than a place to preserve. It is a place to keep alive.
A Personal Focus on Fair Park
Watching parts of historic Fair Park in Dallas fade over the years has inspired me to wonder how a place that was built with so much Texas grit and audacious imagination could be decaying like this once-revered old Leica camera my dad left behind when he died.
Puzzling Layers of a Tale
March 17, 2025
Who are some of the people and what are their stories depicted on the recently restored frieze on the Tower Building? Read about the slice of giant Texas history for all to see in Fair Park.
Hidden Murals
December 15, 2024
The murals created more than 85 years ago in the Tower Building rotunda are now only visible as remnants, but the fragments will soon be joined by the complete works that lie beneath layers of paint. $1.5 million will soon go toward uncovering the murals.
Community Park Update
November 25, 2024
It’s back to fundamentals for Fair Park’s long-promised community park that is to be built where nearly 300 homes were bull dozed in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for a 4,000-space lot for State Fair of Texas parking.
Community Park Saga
October 3, 2024
What does the Fair Park management’s increasingly disheartening story of possible donated-fund mismanagement have to do with the promised 14-acre community park to be built on the historic park’s eastside? Here’s why it’s so important to the know the answer.
The Texas Centennial
Fair Park’s path from pastoral city park to an Art Deco showplace began to evolve when Dallas won the bid to host the statewide and internationally recognized exposition that marked the centennial anniversary when Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836. The grand Texas Centennial Exposition, which ran from June 6-Nov. 29, 1936, was created with an array of beautiful buildings, artwork and landscapes that became a source of Lone Star State pride. All need wise maintenance.
Texas Centennial Art
The artworks created for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition were made by accomplished artists and crafts people across the United States. Not all the artworks built for the Exposition were preserved. Some buildings were demolished and several still standing have murals hidden under a coat of paint.
Hall of State v. Uri
February 16, 2024
Three years ago on February 13-17, 2021, Winter Storm Uri walloped Texas with record-breaking bitter cold, which resulted in massive and days-long power outages. Uri descended on Fair Park and its beloved Texas Hall of State.