I am as tired of writing about the slow-motion dismantling of the Tenth Street Historic District as you probably are reading about it. There is only so much to be said about the blank spaces that have consumed this former freedmen's town in the shadow of downtown; only so much to be written about boarded-up tumbledowns waiting to be devoured by bulldozers; only so much to be muttered about how the city abandoned this neighborhood decades ago and left it ripe for the picking of vultures dressed as developers.
But an exception must be made today for two reasons — each historic in its own way.
First, because of course, the breaking news: The National Trust for Historic Preservation on Thursday added the Tenth Street Historic District to its annual list of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. There, Tenth Street sits alongside Nashville's Music Row, the National Mall Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., and Native American resting places dating back centuries in southeast Utah.
Our local headline — however wrenching, however familiar — is, for a moment, a national tale, too.
"As one of the rare remaining Freedmen's Towns in America, the Tenth Street Historic District is a living testament to the thriving communities that African-Americans forged amidst the unrelenting challenges of the late 19th and early 20th century American South," said Katherine Malone-France, the trust's interim chief preservation officer. "Despite the outsized importance of this inspiring historic district, a steady stream of demolitions fueled by a harmful city ordinance are chipping away at the district's historic residences, costing present and future generations a chance to learn from the legacy of the freedmen in Texas."
Of which we are painfully aware — and have been for years, as dozens of homes listed as contributing structures in the 1993 ordinance designating this district as historic have vanished because of court-ordered demolitions. Former dwelling places, built by and for the people who used to live here, were deemed "nuisance properties" and erased — about 80 out of the 257 that were still standing two decades ago.
What we have witnessed firsthand, up close, outsiders now confirm. We should be grateful for the attention, which comes four months after the Tenth Street Residential Association filed a federal lawsuit that worries that "the historic residences of the District will be lost and replaced with new development as was done with the other Freedmen's Town areas in the City of Dallas."
Neighborhoods like Tenth Street exist all over the country, all over this city — tumbledown towns in the shadows of The Big City, the land of peeling paint and boarded-up windows. "Where the highways go," as the Trust's Barbara Pahl said this week, "Where you build the new arena." Where land is considered cheap; the people, dispensable.
"All these vacant lots, the disinvestment, those are things we've seen across the country," said Pahl, the nonprofit's senior vice president for field services. She was in Dallas in April and saw Tenth Street for herself. The last line of a report she prepared with a colleague sums up that tour: "Disinvestment, abandonment, erasure. We've seen it before."
She told me Wednesday: "Things get repeated over and over. And that's what we're hoping to change, to set a new direction for the future."
But adding Tenth Street to a most-endangered list will not solve anything. It will not not save a single house; it will not fill an empty lot. It's a press release followed by a street-side news conference Thursday morning. After which ... well, what, then?
The answer to that question lies at Dallas City Hall, where several departments are striving to repair the damage done by, well, Dallas City Hall. And for this effort we must credit Carolyn King Arnold, the on-and-off council member who, as teacher at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center, had a front-row seat to the demolitions in Tenth Street and the adjacent Bottom neighborhood.
In late February, Arnold sent City Manager T.C. Broadnax a memo demanding the city look at ways to stop the demolitions in the district — something she had also done during her first stint on the council, in 2015, when she secured a 60-day demolition delay that proved but a brief, inconsequential pause. Broadnax then told several department heads to come up with a plan by summer's end.
Kris Sweckard, the former Code Compliance chief now in charge of development, said this week that officials are now considering several options, including a six-month demolition time-out and a revisiting of the historic-overlay ordinance that dictates what kinds of materials must be used to repair and reconstruct century-old-and-older shotguns in deep disrepair. Looking at the latter could lessen the expense for homeowners tethered to the same costly rules that govern, oh, Swiss Avenue or Winnetka Heights.
David Noguera, who oversees housing, said city officials have also talked about freeing up home-repair money. But first, he said, they must bring in outside experts to determine who owns each property, no simple thing in a neighborhood where houses were often handed down without wills or affidavits of heirship. Come summer, Noguera hopes to bring to the City Council the "Tangled Title Pilot Program."
"We're just really at the surface in terms of starting a dialogue, in terms of really getting knowledgeable people at the table to consider our options," Noguera said. "I think if we can get some realistic options on the table, there's too much money in Dallas for us not to find funding to support it."
But all of this will be for naught if the city does nothing to address the cause for so many of these demolitions: a 2010 ordinance, approved by the council, that allowed the city attorney's office to easily tear down homes smaller than 3,000 square feet. City attorneys maintained they needed the ordinance to expeditiously eradicate blight from beleaguered neighborhoods. But preservationists tried to warn us of the unintended consequences.
Katherine Seale, then head of Preservation Dallas and now the Landmark Commission chair, said the rule would "completely obliterate" the city's historic preservation program. Her commission has revolted against city attorneys over the ordinance in recent months. Virginia McAlester, who saved Swiss, said the ordinance "opens the way for someone who prefers a vacant lot to a historic building to deliberately let it rot and bypass Landmark Commission." And that's just what happened.
"When I drive through Tenth Street, I see a lot of potential, and I see the history," said Arnold, now in a runoff to remain in the seat vacated by Dwaine Caraway. "I also get sad, because I realize it shouldn't have fallen to this level. I see bad properties, illegal dumping. We all bear some responsibility, but it's not going to do us any good to look backward."
I suggested to her we must, if only to undo the mistakes that got us here.
"We must look forward now, to take the steps to get it done," she said. "As the folks say in the country, we gotta hope 'em up. Hope 'em up."
It's a start.