Thump. Thump. Thump. Another one bites the dust. And another one gone and another one gone, and another one bites the dust. Queen’s 1980 anthem might as well be the Dallas-area theme song, at least as it pertains to architecture. The latest victim of the wrecker’s ball is the Edwin Cox mansion, an Italianate palace on Highland Park’s Beverly Drive, razed by the billionaire Andrew Beal for, well, nobody quite knows why.
“This is a monumental and tragic loss for the Park Cities and Dallas,” says Willis Winters, president of the advocacy organization Preservation Texas. “The Cox estate was one of the most important beaux arts residences in Texas.” Winters would know. The former director of the Dallas Park and Recreation Department was a co-author, with the noted late Dallas preservationist Virginia McAlester, of the definitive 2008 monograph Great American Suburbs: The Homes of the Park Cities.
“Virginia McAlester would have been outraged at this demolition,” says Winters. “Anyone who possesses a home of this architectural and cultural significance has a moral duty to ensure its preservation for future generations.”
Alas, moral duty has proved to be a tough sell in the Park Cities. Ritzy Beverly Drive, in particular, has seemed like one extended construction site over the past few years, with a series of historic mansions toppled to create even larger mansions. It is frankly obscene, not just for the squandering of so many fine works of architecture, but for the enormous material and environmental resources wasted in this process.
“Likely never before in the history of Highland Park and University Park have as many historic, architecturally significant homes been razed as in the past decade,” writes Larry Good in the introduction to his 2024 guide, The Houses of the Park Cities. That book was created to promote support for preservation in the Park Cities, and for the adoption of at least some legal measures that would protect historic houses from demolition. Currently there are none.
Until that changes, the wrecking balls will continue to swing.
