Dallas Eyes Ways to Spare the Historic Tenth Street District, Which Is Now on a National Most-endangered List

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 freedman'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.   Continue reading...