Mary Apartments

The Mary Apartments, an H-shaped building containing 12 separate units facing a central courtyard, was built about 1925. It is representative of the many modern apartment buildings that began to replace the large Victorian-era mansions of East Dallas during the second and third decades of this century. Of the many apartment buildings constructed in Dallas during this time, the Mary Apartments is of particular interest because of its unique site plan in which the apartments address each other, rather than the street, forming a central court between them. In addition, the English-influenced, picturesque design lends the complex a domestic atmosphere not evident in other, more-utilitarian apartment buildings of the period. The Mary Apartments is a noteworthy example of an early apartment building and is nominated under Criterion C in the area of Architecture at the local level. The building is also significant as a representative multi-family domestic building that became popular between the two world wars and is associated with the historic context, The Development of East and South Dallas: 1872-1945.

Apartment buildings began to appear in East Dallas on a large scale after World War I, as families left older neighborhoods for new suburban additions like Highland Park, to the north, and Munger Place, immediately to the east. While the new additions featured investment protection amenities such as deed restrictions, stylish designs, and family recreation facilities that appealed to home buyers, central city neighborhoods, such as those in East Dallas, with their excellent streetcar service to downtown offices and shops and increased neighborhood businesses, maintained their appeal to renters without family and investment concerns. Modern apartments and the lifestyle associated with them as portrayed in motion pictures were also considered sophisticated, again appealing to single renters. Such apartment buildings were also more likely to have modern conveniences, such as electric refrigerators and gas heat than boarding or rooming houses, and they had the added advantage of privacy and independence.

Apartment buildings in East Dallas were also attractive to investors because large parcels of land suitable for their construction could be purchased at bargain prices once the outmoded Victorian-era houses fell into disfavor. Many of the large estates dating from East Dallas' initial period of development (1879-1893) were broken up after the turn of the century for more intensive single-family development. However, in the decades that followed World War I, apartment buildings began to surpass single-family redevelopment as replacements for older houses when the demographics of the central city shifted in favor of single residents and small families. Multi-family apartments, such as the Mary Apartments, that made maximum use of the land with the least amount of investment were particularly appealing to small entrepreneurs who often resided in one of the apartment units while they received an income from the others. When the Mary Apartments Building was built in 1925, it was the first of a number of apartment buildings to replace the single-family homes which themselves had earlier displaced older estates.

As a building type, the Mary Apartments helped usher in a new era in domestic construction in East Dallas; however, they are also noteworthy for the Tudor Revival detailing. This architectural expression was quite popular in Dallas during the 1920s and 1930s, but it was seen most often in single-family residences. The Mary Apartments, on the other hand, is a somewhat rare illustration of a multi-family domestic building that incorporates elements of the Tudor Revival style. Relatively few alterations detract from its historic character.