The Town of Preston Hollow

Post-annexation period

The annexation of Preston Hollow coincided perfectly with the suburban boom of postwar America. At the time of annexation, Preston Hollow was an island surrounded by Caruth land to the south and east, the holdings of other farm families to the west (which were slowly being developed) and the vast North Texas countryside to the north. Many historians have described Woodall Rodgers as having a “manifest destiny” to extend the boundaries of the City of Dallas to the northern edge of Dallas County and beyond. He did not want the new parts of his city to be filled with farmland but with attractive suburban developments. This wish was granted in the 1950s, when the areas around Preston Hollow were filled in within a few decades. This rapid increase of population required original neighborhood institutions to expand to keep up with the demand. Hillcrest High School (after dropping “Vickery” from its original name) joined Dallas ISD, outgrew its 1938 building and received a major expansion in the 1950s. The Texas Country Day School merged with The Cathedral School (the child of the St. Luke’s and Terril School combination a few years earlier) to form St. Mark’s in September 1950, creating one of the most powerful schools in the nation. Just down the road, Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church watched its membership more than double from 1953 to 1958, outgrowing the original sanctuary (Founder’s Hall), which held 250. Land was acquired from the Stichter family south of the original campus, and famous Dallas architect Mark Lemmon was rehired to design a new sanctuary that, in present day, can seat almost 1,000. The commercial parts of Preston Hollow saw similar trends. Neiman Marcus and Sanger Harris both opened large department stores in Preston Center in the 1950s. Increasing demand for retail led to the development of Preston Royal Shopping Center in the late 1950s. When the original Preston Hollow City Council men first started meeting in The Little White House in the late ’30s to govern their little country town, I doubt they could have ever imagined two major department stores and one of the most luxurious shopping centers in Dallas being across the street from them a few decades later. The new developments may have ended the country feel and isolation that brought people to the area in the ’30s and ’40s as the boundaries became blurred with the surrounding neighborhoods, but Preston Hollow would always remain the anchor area of North Dallas. To this day, many people in the general North Dallas area still refer to their home or business as being in “Preston Hollow.”