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Oak Lawn, Dallas

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Oak Lawn
Nickname: 
Gayborhood
Location in Dallas
  Official
  Unofficial
CountryUnited States
StateTexas
CountiesDallas
CityDallas
Area
 • Total
12 sq mi (31 km2)
Elevation
479 ft (146 m)
Population
 (2014)
 • Total
50,805 [1]
 Population total includes combined population of Oak Lawn and Uptown
ZIP codes
75201, 75204, 75205, 75219, 75235 (small area)
Area code(s)214, 469, 972, 945
Websitehttp://www.oaklawncommittee.org/

Oak Lawn is a neighborhood in Dallas, Texas (United States), defined in Dallas City Ordinance 21859 as Planned Development District No. 193, the Oak Lawn Special Purpose District Archived 2011-07-08 at the Wayback Machine. The unofficial boundaries are Turtle Creek Boulevard, Central Expressway, the City of Highland Park, Inwood Road, and Harry Hines Boulevard. It is over 12 square miles (31 km2) in area.[2][citation needed] Officially it is bounded by the City of Highland Park, the North Central Expressway, Stemmons Freeway, Woodall Rodgers Freeway, and other roads. The district is within the boundary defined by the City of Dallas law, excluding any existing planned development districts within.[3]

About

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Oak Lawn is one of the wealthier areas of metropolitan Dallas, with the population consisting mainly of urban professionals. The area is peppered with upscale townhouses, condos, apartments, and duplexes. Along the Uptown portion on McKinney Avenue and along Turtle Creek Boulevard, there are many new high-rise condominiums and apartments. It is also a very diverse neighborhood with well established areas of older, single family homes.

For most of the 20th century the southern portion of the neighborhood near the intersection of Cedar Springs Road and Harry Hines Blvd was known as "Little Mexico". St. Anne's Catholic school served as the center for the community. With the redevelopment of the neighborhood beginning in the 1980s Little Mexico vanished. Only a few structures of this original community remain for most have been replaced by high rise office buildings, luxury hotels, and condominiums. As of 2010, St Ann's Catholic School, which had closed, is now an upscale restaurant.

Oak Lawn became a magnet for the counterculture movement in the late 1960s due to its inexpensive apartments and its proximity to Turtle Creek Park (formerly known as Lee Park and Oak Lawn Park).

Geography

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Neighborhoods

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Government and infrastructure

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The United States Postal Service operates the Oak Lawn Post Office at 2825 Oak Lawn Avenue; ZIP Code: 75219.[4]

The Federal Bureau of Prisons South Central Region Office was previously in Oak Lawn.[5] It has since moved to the U.S. Armed Forces Reserve Complex in Grand Prairie, Texas.[6]

Diplomatic missions

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The Consulate-General of the United Kingdom in Dallas was located in Suite 940 at 2911 Turtle Creek Boulevard.[7][8]

In April 2005 the British government announced that it was closing the Dallas consulate in the summer of 2005; its territory was transferred to the consulate-general in Houston. It was one of 19 British diplomatic missions shut down around that time period.[9] The Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom said that the consulates and embassies closed as a way to decrease costs.[9][10]

The Consulate-General of Mexico in Dallas is also located in Oak Lawn. Alfredo Corchado of The Dallas Morning News said that as of 2009, in terms of activity and size of the area Mexican population, the Dallas consulate is considered to be the third most important Mexican consulate after Los Angeles and Chicago.[11]

The consulate moved from 8855 North Stemmons Freeway to 1210 River Bend Drive in January 2009.[12]

Education

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Public schools

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North Dallas High School

The public schools in Oak Lawn are part of the Dallas Independent School District and are zoned[permanent dead link‍] among the following:

  • Ben Milam Elementary School
  • Esperanza "Hope" Medrano Elementary School
  • Maple Lawn Elementary School
  • North Dallas High School
  • Sam Houston Elementary School
  • T. J. Rusk Middle School

The William B. Travis Academy/Vanguard for the Academically Talented and Gifted is located near McKinney Avenue and Oak Grove Avenue.

In 2014-2015 its student body was 95% low income; despite that it exceeded its "performance targets". Due to gentrification, Sam Houston's enrollment declined to 201 students in the 2015-2016 school year while it had 302 students in the 2011-2012 school year.[13]

Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School was previously in Oak Lawn.[14]

Private schools

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The Walt Whitman Community School (WWCS), an LGBT-oriented private school, was established in 1997 in Oak Lawn.[15] It closed in 2004.

Public Libraries

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The Oak Lawn Branch of the Dallas Public Library serves the Oak Lawn area. In addition to its regular library holdings, it has the only circulating, non-reference collection of LGBT materials in the US.[16]

Infrastructure

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Transportation

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A trolley running along a now-defunct trolleyline in 1948

Central Expressway (US 75) flanks the community on the east. Spur 366, known locally as Woodall Rodgers Freeway, runs along the southern border of the community. The Lomac and Uptown portions of Oak Lawn are served by the free M-Line, provided by the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority and Dallas Area Rapid Transit. The Blue and Red light-rail lines stop at Cityplace Station, right outside Oak Lawn. Just outside Oak Lawn to the southwest is Victory Station in Victory Park, which is served by the Trinity Railway Express, both red and blue lines during special events, and regularly by the Green and Orange light rail lines. The two lines continue to the northwest, stopping at Market Center Station and Southwestern Medical District/Parkland Station within Oak Lawn.

Culture

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Main article: LGBT culture in Dallas–Fort Worth
The Oaklawn Halloween Block Party

Oak Lawn is considered to be the epicenter of Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex's gay- and lesbian-culture. Cedar Springs Road, between Oak Lawn Avenue and Wycliff Avenue, has numerous businesses, retail establishments, restaurants and night clubs catering to the LGBTQ community. The area has some of Dallas' most renowned gay bars and nightclubs, most of which are located along, or close to, Cedar Springs Road. Oak Lawn is contiguous with the Dallas Design District and less than two miles away from Downtown Dallas.

The area also hosts some of the larger city festivals including the annual Halloween street festival, Dallas' Gay Pride parade, and Easter in the Park at Oak Lawn Park (formerly Robert E. Lee Park).

In 2014, Dallas's Oak Lawn was voted the number one gayborhood by Out Traveler.[17] In October 2018, Dallas made history when it became the first Texas city to get state recognition for its Oak Lawn LGBT neighborhood.[18]

There is a large concentration of Hispanic owned businesses, restaurants, grocery stores, nightclubs, and retail establishments on the Maple Avenue corridor between the Inwood Road and the North Dallas Tollway.

Architecture

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Oak Lawn is one of the older neighborhoods in Dallas. Continuous redevelopment of the neighborhood has created a mixture of architectural styles spanning much of the 20th century to the present day.

Measuring by structural height, the tallest buildings in or adjacent to Oak Lawn are as follows:[19]

  1. Cityplace Center, 560 feet (171 m) (42 floors)
  2. W Dallas Victory Hotel and Residences, 439 feet (134 m) (32 floors)
  3. Azure, 375 feet (114 m) (31 floors)
  4. 1900 McKinney (26 floors)
  5. Mayfair at Turtle Creek, 302 feet (92 m) (24 floors)
  6. 2500 McKinney, 285 feet (87 m) (25 floors)
  7. Ritz-Carlton, Dallas, 285 feet (87 m) (21 floors)
  8. 17 Seventeen McKinney (22 floors)
  9. Residences on McKinney, 231 feet (70 m) (22 floors)
  10. La Tour Condominiums (22 floors)
  11. McKinney Avenue Lofts (21 floors)
  12. The Ashton (20 floors)
  13. The Mondrian (20 floors)
  14. The Vendome, 252 feet (77 m) (20 floors)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Dallas".
  2. ^ "About|The Oak Lawn Committee".
  3. ^ "Oak Lawn Special Purpose District Archived 2011-07-08 at the Wayback Machine." City of Dallas. p. 1. Retrieved on November 19, 2011. "PD 193 is established on property generally bounded by Woodall Rodgers Freeway, North Central Expressway, the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad, the city limits of the City of Highland Park, Bordeaux Avenue, Inwood Road, Denton Drive Cut-off, Maple Avenue, Cedar Springs Branch Creek, Harry Hines Boulevard, Oak Lawn Avenue, and Stemmons Freeway but excluding existing PD's within those boundaries. The size of PD 193 is approximately 2619.92 acres."
  4. ^ "Post Office Location - OAK LAWN Archived 2009-07-28 at the Wayback Machine." United States Postal Service. Retrieved on December 4, 2008.
  5. ^ "South Central Region Office." Federal Bureau of Prisons. Retrieved on January 1, 2010. "SOUTH CENTRAL REGIONAL OFFICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS 4211 CEDAR SPRINGS RD DALLAS, TX 75219"
  6. ^ "RO South Central." Federal Bureau of Prisons. Retrieved on June 1, 2015. "US ARMED FORCES RESERVE CMPL GRAND PRAIRIE, TX 75051"
  7. ^ Uden, Tim. "BUG Britain & Ireland: The Backpackers' Ultimate Guide." BUG Backpackers Guide. 2005. 16.
  8. ^ "British Consulate, Dallas, Texas." Britain in USA. Retrieved on January 30, 2009.
  9. ^ a b Allen, Margaret. "Dallas' British Consulate to close in money-saving move." Dallas Business Journal. Friday April 1, 2005. Retrieved on May 9, 2009.
  10. ^ "Britain to close to High Commission in Nassau Archived July 28, 2009, at the Wayback Machine." Caribbean Net News. Friday December 17, 2004. Retrieved on January 9, 2009.
  11. ^ Corchado, Alfredo. "Mexico removing Dallas consul general." The Dallas Morning News. Saturday August 15, 2009. Retrieved on August 27, 2009.
  12. ^ Resendiz, Julian. "For consulate, it's a big step Mexican officials say move to new building will go smoothly." The Dallas Morning News. June 18, 2009. Retrieved on August 28, 2009.
  13. ^ Nicholson, Eric. "Will Gentrification Destroy Dallas' Public Schools, or Will It Save Them?" Dallas Observer. Monday November 2, 2015. Retrieved on June 24, 2016.
  14. ^ Swartz, Mimi. "Going Public" ( Archived 2015-12-26 at the Wayback Machine). Texas Monthly. February 2005. Retrieved on December 26, 2015.
  15. ^ Fowler, Jimmy. "School's out." Dallas Observer. November 13, 1997. p. 1 (Archived 2010-09-01 at the Wayback Machine). Retrieved on September 22, 2014.
  16. ^ "Library Pride aims to boost LGBT collection" http://www.dallasvoice.com/library-pride-aims-boost-lgbt-collection-10130015.html Archived 2012-10-29 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ "Out Traveler Awards 2014: Best Gayborhoods". 8 December 2014.
  18. ^ "How did Dallas' Oak Lawn community get its start? Curious Texas investigates". Dallas News. 2019-03-14. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  19. ^ "All buildings | Buildings". Emporis. Archived from the original on April 10, 2013. Retrieved 2013-12-05.
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