A house near the Greenville Avenue reservoir once owned by Dallas Water Utilities. (Photo courtesy of Flashback Dallas.)

If you’ve traversed the intersection at Mockingbird Lane and Greenville Avenue, you may have noticed a dilapidated little building near a hill. It looks like a house, but the structure once housed machinery and equipment for Dallas Water Utilities.

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The building sits atop an underground reservoir built on 16 acres in 1929. At the time, it was touted as the city’s highest point of elevation, according to Flashback Dallas. The City of Dallas planned to turn the land around the outpost into a public park, but those plans never materialized.

Below is an image of the building from a 1950s-era silent film on the City of Dallas Department of Waterworks.

An image of the building from a 1950s-era silent film on the City of Dallas Department of Waterworks. (Photo from the Dallas Municipal Archives.)