Here's the Strange, Sad Story of How East Dallas' 107-year-old ‘House of the Future' Became a Landmark

Without ceremony or celebration, Dallas' Landmark Commission on Monday proclaimed a one-story Mission Revival house — carved from concrete more than a century ago — a historic landmark.There was no applause; there were no cheers. There was barely even an audience in the cold and cavernous chamber built for the Dallas City Council. The only remarks came from the commission's chair Katherine Seale: "Congratulations to our newest landmark designation," she said, referring to the so-called "House of the Future" that had only narrowly dodged becoming a thing of the past tossed into a landfill.This is the so-called Bianchi House on Reiger and N. Carroll avenues in East Dallas. It had been abandoned for years by Rick Leggio, an owner who had gone missing for reasons we will never know — perhaps because of illness, perhaps because of heartbreak, perhaps to dodge the mountain of code citations that City Hall delivered.When I first visited the home in April 2016, a homeless couple greeted me on the rotting front porch. They were bundled up next to beer cans that had been stacked beneath the plaque noting the house's place on the National Register of Historic Places since 1995.  Continue reading...