A 1973 Dallas Morning News article captured the neighbors’ efforts to protect the classic columns.
Two towering masonry columns sit astride Abrams Parkway where it curves south from the Lakewood Library and nears Glasgow Drive. They’ve only been there since 1975, however. The 30-foot columns were built in 1917 at Tremont Street and Glasgow Drive to mark the gateway between Munger Place and a new suburban addition, Junius Heights. “At the time they were erected, this was the end of the line for the open streetcars of that era, and automobiles came to the columns and turned around, as there was only prairie beyond,” states a booklet created for the 1975 bicentennial celebration in Dallas. By the ’70s, the decrepit columns reflected the post-WWII decline of East Dallas. One day, neighborhood activist Fred Longmore found a bulldozer “bearing down” on a smaller column that was part of the original gateway, the booklet says. “It was explained to him that the columns were in the way of progress, as this was where the new Columbia-Abrams thoroughfare was coming through.” Longmore was able to halt progress for a month, enough time to form a Committee to Preserve the Junius Heights Columns and raise $13,000 to dismantle and move them to where they now sit. Every donation counted; a July 29, 1973 Dallas Morning News story notes that “one elderly $6 contributor said she and her sister in their youth used to go to the pillars to tell their innermost secrets.” (Source: The Dallas Morning News, “Junius Heighs Columns” booklet)
