Lakewood and East Dallas are full of lovely spaces that beckon us to take a moment or two of respite or reflection. So we asked a handful of architects who live in our neighborhood to share about the places that most inspire them.

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Swiss Avenue Historic District
“Back in the early ’80s, when I was first in the business on my own, I lived down on Lower Swiss. When times were pretty thin, to relieve stress, I used to walk or run the avenue, going up and down the street. I used to go and kind of classify each building … it was something that gave some guidance and direction early on. They all seem to be stately — homes that seem to be a kind of collective. Individual pieces make a collective structure as opposed to a stapling-on of a neat idea.”
Greg Lorie, Architectura owner
Residential

Musician’s Row, 5800 block of La Vista
“The houses look old, but they’re so solid; they’re built of stone and brick, and they don’t look like something that you’d come in and say, ‘Oh, here’s a perfect place for a teardown.’ Because if you removed one of them, you’d destroy the block. It’s a very short block — only seven or eight houses on each side. And you couldn’t put anything in there any larger because they’re like rows of teeth; they fit perfectly. If you took one out and tried to put a bigger tooth in there, it just wouldn’t fit.”
Mike Hellinghausen, Omniplan COO
Large-scale commercial, retail and institutional buildings

Lindsley Park
“What Hollywood/Santa Monica neighbors started finding was that this rather unused piece of land was becoming the center of the entire community, and, in fact, not just the center of our community but the entire East Dallas community. We found that on the weekends it became a real unique place, in that you had people representing all ethnicities, all cultures, all economic backgrounds — all recreating in one place. And it’s amazing — when people are in T-shirts and blue jeans, we all kind of look alike out there.”
Craig Reynolds, BRW Architects principal
Municipal, recreation, worship and educational spaces

6858 Avalon, mid-century modern by Howard Meyer
“Good design — it’s hard to build and hard to maintain. They have a 50-year-old house that’s only in good shape because the people who own it love the house. Every project that I’ve been involved in, that’s a really wonderful piece of architecture, it’s always been a result of the architect and the client and the contractor all giving more than what they have to. That house on Avalon is just an example, to me, of the kind of house you’d have if you care. I walk by that house, and it inspires me to keep the faith. To give more than I have to — as Louis Kahn says, ‘as an offering to architecture.’”
Marc McCollum, Modern Residential Architecture
Furniture design

Diener-Mills building, former Lakewood library branch >>
“Because of the cost of stone these days, there are fewer opportunities, fewer clients that are inclined to spend money on the exterior limestone. It’s just a beautiful material. It’s one that you can particularly enjoy up-close, just because of all the character of the fossils that are left in the base of the stone. When it was a library, there were some notes referencing children who remembered coming to the library and spending time looking at the fossils on the outside of the wall. It’s just one of those intriguing elements, and it’s unique to Texas because it’s quarried here.”
Gerald Worrell III, WKA Architects Inc. president
Financial, governmental and commercial office buildings