Mrs. Baird's Bread Company Building

The establishment of a bakery in East Dallas for Mrs. Baird's Bread Company, in 1928, marked the first expansion of this major Texas-based company beyond the city of Fort Worth, where it originated. The East Dallas operation represented the first branch of what became a statewide bakery operation and eventually the largest independent baking company in the country (Dallas Morning News (DMN), June 4, 1961). Today, the building is the oldest tangible link to the early operations of the company. The East Dallas site was well-chosen for its proximity to expanding suburban markets to the north and east, as well as for its streetcar accessibility to an established workforce. The bakery was among the first major, non-retail enterprises in this East Dallas area, and its establishment precipitated the transformation of the predominantly residential suburb to a more urban commercial and manufacturing center. At the height of its operation, the bakery had more than 300 people on its payroll, making it a major employer in the area. Although the company sold the building in the 1950s and moved to a new facility, the success of the Dallas bakery led to branch bakeries in cities throughout Texas. The Mrs. Baird's Bread Company Bakery Building is nominated to the National Register in the area of Industry as the earliest extant building of Mrs. Baird's in Dallas. The building is also nominated in the area of Architecture as a rare and noteworthy example of early 20th- century, light-industrial, commercial architecture. It is associated with the historic context, The Development of East and South Dallas: 1872-1945.

Mrs. Baird's Bread Company is a Texas success story of a widowed mother's efforts to support her family by baking and selling bread out of her own kitchen and eventually expanding the operation into a wholesale bakery business with statewide clientele. Ninnie L. Baird began selling bread from her Fort Worth home in 1908. Government contracts during World War I sparked the firm's construction of its first bakery and encouraged Mrs. Baird to expand into the wholesale grocery supply business. In 1928, the family decided to expand into the Dallas market and they built their first bakery outside of Fort Worth at 1401 N. Carroll, in East Dallas.

Dallas was a natural site for a branch bakery, as it had a growing cosmopolitan population during the 1920s and was within traveling distance of company headquarters in neighboring Fort Worth. The East Dallas site took advantage of an existing market and workforce and was near speculative markets in the expanding suburban additions farther north and east. Those areas were the fastest-growing sections of Dallas in the 1920s, with annexed territory to the northeast nearly doubling the size of the city in that decade. Since the growth of Baird's business relied on increased delivery sites, the establishment of the bakery at Carroll and Bryan avenues, at the northeastern edge of the old city at the periphery of the new suburban tracts, maximized the range of their territory. The location of the bakery was also determined, somewhat, by the lack of zoning regulations and construction restrictions in the newer suburban tracts which prohibited manufacturing and commercial buildings. The bakery was established near the northeastern edge of the unrestricted zone with maximum access to the restricted additions.

The site was purchased from Central Congregational Church in 1928, and the Bairds had the new bakery constructed and in operation by 1929. The East Dallas site was also on the interurban line that entered Dallas on Bryan Avenue and provided transportation to the plant for the many route salesmen who canvassed the city. With the Dallas move, the Baird family made the decision to remain a family-owned and operated business, as it continues to this day, and one of the sons, Roland W. Baird, the treasurer of the company, moved to Dallas to take personal charge of the new addition. By 1940, Roland W. Baird was president of the company. The Dallas operation proved as successful as the Fort Worth bakery and during its years of operation, from 1929 until a new, larger Dallas bakery was needed in the mid-1950s, employment rose from about 50 to over 300, most of whom were route salesmen (Baird, 1991).

The establishment of the bakery also represented a change in character for the East Dallas neighborhood in which it was located. The predominantly residential area had gradually become more commercial, particularly along the streetcar routes, by the mid-1920. Only one block west of the bakery site, at the intersection of Bryan and Peak avenues, a major commercial center provided shopping, entertainment, and services to the local residents (Bryan-Peak Commercial Historic District). When the bakery was built, it was one of the few non-retail, manufacturing businesses in East Dallas and, along with the Bell Telephone Company, it became a major employer in the area. The establishment of the bakery presaged East Dallas' future re-development as an increasingly urban, non-residential sector of the city. The Depression years of the 1930s hampered the retail trade at the nearby commercial node at Bryan and Peak streets, and many of the stores went out of business. Mrs. Baird's, however, continued to operate through the 1930s and prospered in the 1940s to the extent that the building at 1401 N. Carroll was inadequate for the demand in Dallas. The Baird's sold the plant in the early 1950s and opened a larger bakery in North Dallas. Today, the old bakery is a warehouse for Dallas Bias Fabric Company.

The Mrs. Baird's Bread Company Building has some Prairie School elements in its ornamentation, and it retains virtually all its original historic architectural fabric. It is a good and significant example of early 20th-century commercial architecture in East Dallas, though few buildings of this scale and massing were erected in this part of the city prior to World War II. Nonetheless, the building is a prominent landmark in a mixed-use area that is dominated by commercial buildings.

Equally important, however, are the building's contributions to the changing patterns of industry in East Dallas and to the success of the Texas-based Mrs. Baird's Bread Company, which may represent its most enduring significance.