Audio By Carbonatix
A good Friend of Unfair Park sends word of a most historic property for sale not far from Unfair Park HQ: 3206 Knight Street, yours for the low, low price of $399,999. Notice the year built: 1874. Which happens to coincide with the construction of the first home of Oak Lawn United Methodist Church. So happens, it is in fact the original structure in which Rev. Marcus Hiram Cullum preached his first sermon. Odd thing is, the Dallas Central Appraisal District shows the house as having been built in 1932. Most likely, that’s because that’s the year it was moved from its original location closer to Cedar Springs Road and Oak Lawn Avenue.
“It has a very interesting history,” says John Garlow, who’s handling the sale of the house. “It was the original civic center and the last remaining building of the city of Cedar Springs, which, at the time, was more dominant than the city of Dallas. It was moved in the late part of the 19th century, converted into the sort of Victorian look it has today and pushed to the back of the lot. And in 1932, it was moved yet again to its current location and had a major remodel in the ’30s and again in the ’70s.”
Garlow, of course, wants to sell the house — but he worries that since it’s more or less the last single-family structure standing in the neighborhood, its next owner may be its last. “It hasn’t shown up on Preservation Dallas’s radar, it has no city-designated historic protection, and people discount its historical value. But I’d love to see it saved.”
Update: Shortly after we published this, the Dallas Voice ran a photo of the building as it originally looked. I imagine it came from A.C. Greene’s book A Town Called Cedar Springs, maybe?
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