Dallas Tent and Awning Building
a.k.a. Murray Building
3401 Commerce St., Dallas, TXThe Dallas Tent and Awning Building (1921), 3401 Commerce Street, Dallas, built for the Dallas Tent and Awning Company, was subsequently owned by the Murray Company, manufacturers of industrial equipment, including cotton gins and oil field machinery. The handsome Commercial Style building features simple ornamentation and fenestration typical to commercial and industrial buildings of the period. The Dallas Tent and Awning Building are nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in the area of Industry, for its association with the industrial development of the Dallas' Deep Ellum neighborhood, and in the Area of Architecture, as a good example of an early 20th-century Commercial Style building, both at the local level of significance.
When the Dallas Tent and Awning Building was constructed in 1920, Deep Ellum, a neighborhood just east of downtown Dallas, was in transition from a poor residential and commercial area to a manufacturing and wholesale district. Settled as a "freedmen's town" by former slaves after the Civil War, the area's name is derived from a local pronunciation of "Deep Elm," after Elm Street, the main thoroughfare. By the 1920s, Deep Ellum became a retail and entertainment center for Dallas' African-American residents, with numerous retail stores, nightclubs, and cafes, as well as the Black Knights of Pythias Grand Temple, which provided office space for Black doctors, dentists, and lawyers. The east section of Deep Ellum, near Fair Park and railroad tracks, had a mixed working class population living in small frame homes. Several industries were set up in Deep Ellum, including the Continental Gin Company (founded in 1883, consolidated in 1899), and the Ford Motor Company's Southwestern Ford Assembly Plant (1913). By the 1930s, the area had completed the transition to a manufacturing and wholesale district, linked by railroad to other large cities in the Midwest and Southern U.S.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.