Douglas Newby Insights - Page 20
Diverse Housing → Apartments
Dallas housing officials, urbanists, and politicians have a love affair with apartments and increased density. Their talking point is that more apartments provide more affordable housing. “More density” has become the avant-garde mantra of the housing and planning cartel. In fact, zoning that is higher than the existing housing stock already built eliminates affordable housing in the area. Overzoning in a neighborhood also eliminates diversity of housing. When the 100 block of Old East Dallas was first being considered to be rezoned from multifamily zoning to single-family zoning, the opposition did not come from the developer mayor, or even apartment owners. The opposition to single-family rezoning came from well-intentioned people including those in the Park Cities and North Dallas concerned about gentrification. Single-family zoning was also opposed by the nationally renowned Dallas city planners and liberal neighborhood advocates, saying multifamily zoning was critical for the success of mass transportation and affordable housing. This single-family rezoning was enacted and there is still a diversity of housing in place from small one-story bungalows to historic duplexes, quadplexes, and 1960s two-story garden style apartments. Just a block over from the historic districts in the single-family zoned area are new massive three- and four-story apartment complexes being built. Each new large apartment complex eliminates another modest structure that a lower-income homebuyer might purchase or even rent. They need to remember new apartments are always expensive. They always have been and always will be. *Diverse Housing → Apartments
#Gentrification #Density #DensityDestroysNeighborhoods #DensityDestroysDiverseHousing #OldEastDallas #HistoricDistrict #SingleFamilyZoning #OverZoning #Dallas #DiverseHousing #Apartments #Bungalows #OlderApartments #OlderHomes #InexpensiveHousing
East Lawther Home
Many are familiar with the several-acre estate lots on West Lawther. How many are aware of the home along East Lawther and Arboretum Point? On my thousands of bike rides around White Rock Lake, I noticed the land, the lake, the trees, the meadow, the hill, but never really noticed the home on Arboretum Point that overlooks all of this. This shot from the backyard of the Arboretum Point home is tucked back into nature. It is a home that can enjoy nature and the broad views of White Rock Lake from its gardens, porches, and interior spaces. *East Lawther Home
#EastLawther #WhiteRockLakeHome #WhiteRockLake #ArboretumPoint #Landscape #Architect #Architecture #Dallas #Neighborhood #DallasNeighborhood #EmeraldIsleDallas #WhiteRockLakePark #WinfreyPoint #UrbanLake #UrbanNature #UrbanNeighborhood #Backyard #PathToSMU #PathToTrinityGroves
Screen Porch
Summer is here! What better place to spend it in Dallas than on a screen porch enjoying the cool breezes that are further filtered by the meadows and trees that surround the lake. On a hot summer day in the city it is easy to forget you can find a wonderful cool green oasis in Dallas. The very savvy and fortunate homebuyers found a site in Dallas where they can still enjoy the city when they are not traveling in the summer. A screen porch is almost summer magic. *Screen Porch
#ScreenPorch #ScreenedPorch #WhiteRockLake #Summer #Dallas #Neighborhood #DallasNeighborhood #ArboretumPoint #EastLawther #Nature #SummerBreezes #WhiteRockLakePark #WinfreyPoint #Architect #Architecture #Design #UrbanNature #Staycation #PathToSMU #PathToTrinityGroves #DowntownNeighborhood #UrbanNeighborhood #BikePath #UrbanLake #EmeraldIsleDallas
Rolling Land to Lake
As seen from this porch, here is my favorite stretch of White Rock Lake to ride my bike. Wind is at my back, there is a slight slope in my favor, the lake is on one side and the meadow, park, and Arboretum is on the other side of the bike trail. One does not even notice this single home on Arboretum Point with balconies and porches overlooking Winfrey Point, the Park, and White Rock Lake. This White Rock Lake home is such a good example of how it is not important how much land your home is on, but what it is next to or across from. Here, the home is on a half acre but it looks across 1,000 acres of lake and park. *Rolling Land to Lake
#ArboretumPoint #WhiteRockLake #WhiteRockLakeHome #WhiteRockHome #EmeraldIsleDallas #Park #Landscape #Architecture #Design #Porch #Balcony #PathToTrinityGroves #PathToSMU #Backyard #UrbanNature #Dallas #Neighborhood #DallasNeighborhood #EastLawther
Period Photograph Before Its Time
This casual photograph taken in the early spring of 2019 is current, but the photograph already feels dated.This is not a picture taken in Cuba with its arrested political and physical development and is not a small town in the Midwest where current civilization and trends have not yet landed. This is New York. This is Manhattan. This is where North American trends originate. But still I look at the photograph and already feel 50 years in the past because we are so close to having such a different urban future. Will we have Yellow Cabs in the next few years? I don’t think so. Will there be intervals of empty streets in the late afternoon in the middle of the largest city in the country? I don’t think so. It is not the historic buildings that make this photograph look like a period image before its time. Classical architecture is a wonderful backdrop for any technology that is emerging. Archaic predetermined streetlight timers are not going to regulate the flow of air taxis, drones, mini-vehicles, autonomous transportation devices, and shared lanes of pedestrians and myriad forms of movement. Uber is planning on relocating a major part of their corporation to Dallas, also chosen as a demonstration area for their air taxis and other forms of advanced transportation. Are younger cities like Dallas more open to technology or less resistant to change than New York? Will New York regulation, unions, and urban tradition keep Yellow Cabs as the look of the future? I still don’t think so. I suggest anyone living or visiting New York enhale the street scenes of Manhattan that will seem as quaint as pictures of horses and buggies on New York streets a hundred years ago. *Period Photograph Before Its Time
#YellowCab #PeriodPhotograph #PeriodPhotographBeforeItsTime #AirTaxi #NewYork #NewYork2019 #Manhattan #CityNostalgia #Nostalgia #Dallas #Uber #PrimitiveTransportation #PrimitiveStreetTraffic #Primitive #Yesterday #FleetingLook #Urban #Urbanism #City #Streetscape #Historic #Architecture #Architect #NewYorkArchitecture #NewYorkStreet #airtaxi @uber
Neiman Marcus Inside Out
Neiman Marcus has been famous for their downtown windows originally showing off fashion of designers Stanley Marcus discovered in Europe and brought to the United States. They joined Marshall Field on Michican Avenue in Chicago and Saks Fifth Avenue to entice one to trek to the city just to look at the fashion framed by the windows of these iconic retailers. These windows were like an amuse-bouche that whet your appetite, maybe even giving one courage to go inside the store to see more. A purchase was accelerated by the foundation of aspirational desire that came from admiring the goods in the deep store windows. Now Hudson Yards turns the visual concept of retail inside out. At the Hudson Yards Neiman Marcus, the best view through a window is not on the street looking into the store front window, but from the inside of Neiman Marcus looking outside at the Vessel, a walkable sculpture by architect Thomas Heatherwick. This sculpture might have cost more than all the inventory inside Neiman Marcus. It seems to me Hudson Yards is a parenthetical experiment between the adrenalin-charged destination of a downtown Neiman Marcus and increased online shopping. Will an experiential-oriented mall ever replace a stroll down a New York street of store windows or shopping online? As retail, technology, and transporation rapidly evolve, it will be interesting to see if the trend is moving towards Hudson Yards style malls or towards a more vibrant street scene of the future. *Neiman Marcus Inside Out
#NeimanMarcus #HudsonYards #StoreWindow #StanleyMarcus #Retail #Mall #InsideOut #NewYork #Dallas #ThomasHeatherwick #Vessel #Architecture #Architect #Design #Experiential @reflectionofaman
Day at the Office
With a wheelbarrow and a cell phone, anyone can be a CEO of their organization or personal industry. The smile of this young CEO reflects his open-door policy and lack of irritation at being interrupted. He didn’t even demand makeup, hair, or wardrobe for this photo shoot. *Day at the Office
#Texas #Dallas #CEO #Wheelbarrow #Furniture #OfficeChair #LoungeChair #ExecutiveChair #Recliner #Office #Industry #CellPhone #PhotoShoot #Portrait #Foundation
Swiss Avenue Value
Homes on Swiss Avenue boulevard might offer the greatest combination of aesthetic attributes and value in Dallas. After many years of Swiss Avenue and the surrounding Old East Dallas neighborhoods being suspect, now a new generation of very successful young professionals and families have embraced this beautiful safe neighborhood. With historic districts on three sides of Swiss Avenue, and Lakewood shopping center and Lakewood conservation district at the end of Swiss Avenue, the Swiss Avenue historic district is now surrounded by beautiful homes and neighborhoods. Further, new residential and retail development is surging in the next layers of neighborhoods surrounding Swiss Avenue. Munger Place and Swiss Avenue is also in the heart of the restoration area, and is the origin place of all great 20th century architecture in Dallas. Before Hal Thomson and Fooshee & Cheek were designing homes in Highland Park, they were designing homes for the society families and industrialists who wanted to live on Swiss Avenue. Three miles further out from downtown Dallas an acre of land is selling for almost $2 million an acre. Swiss Avenue land closer In has even more intrinsic value. Pictured here is a perennial favorite home on Swiss Avenue. It is beautifully designed on almost an acre of land with views down the boulevard to the downtown Dallas skyline. With well over 5,000 s.f. and high ceilings, spacious open rooms, and an enormous amount of large windows, this one hundred year-old renovated home is a perfect example and exemplifies why Swiss Avenue homeowners are so excited about where they live. What other city has a neighborhood of architect-designed homes in such a lovely environment just two miles from downtown? A few blocks away, the Sante Fe Trail leads you to White Rock Lake and SMU in one direction and Deep Elm and Trinity groves in other direction. The value of a home is derived from the aesthetics, site, and neighborhood.
*Swiss Avenue Value
#Dallas #SwissAvenue #SwissAvenueBlvd #SwissAvenueHistoricDistrict #HistoricDistrict #Historic #Preservation #Home #MungerPlace #OldEastDallas #Value #SantaFeTrail #Architect #Architecture #Design #HistoricHome
Classical Architecture Compels a Look
What a surprise to see what looks like a series of pen and ink drawings of classical and historical residential buildings at the Whitney Biennial. And yet, my most powerful and profound insight from the exhibition came from this series by artist Milano Chow. I realized that I loved looking at modern residences with planes of intersecting glass that allows the home to merge with nature as I look through it or around it. These modern glass façade homes are visually appealing architectural poetry. However, while I can look through these homes, I am seldom tempted to peer inside as I am so enamored with the sculptural shape and even the reflection of nature and the environment in the glass. On the other hand, impressions of historic buildings like these pen and ink drawings with double-hung windows immediately draw my attention to what might be inside. Maybe it is my inner Jimmy Stewart thinking Grace Kelly is looking over my shoulder in Rear Window, or maybe it is sexier and more provocative to show just a little bit of glass. The viewer of these drawings is rewarded when every window is reviewed and then a figure emerges in one window of each building. The person seen through the window in each drawing conveys a different personality and emotion. Art is about discovery, and this art allows me to discover and think in a new way about windows and glass.
#PenAndInk #ArchitecturalDrawing #HistoricalRendering #Art #ArtInterpretsArchitecture #Drawing #Architecture #Window #Glass #MilanoChow #WhitneyMuseum #WhitneyBiennial #WhitneyBiennial2019 #Museum #Artist #Exhibition #BiennialExhibition #BiennialArtists #NewYork
Bridging the Gap
Curran Hatleberg photographs while he travels around the country getting to know places and people. These photographs do not try to define the places and people but convey some of the detail, mystery, and magic of places we haven’t stopped to explore. I love this photograph bridging the gap between what we know and what we don’t know. And makes us curious to want to know. *Bridging the Gap
#CurranHatleberg #photography #photograph #photographer #car #Bridge #BridgingTheGap #WhitneyMuseum #WhitneyBiennial #WhitneyBiennial2019 #Design #Museum #Art #Artist #Exhibition #BiennialExhibition #BiennialArtists #NewYork