Photo by Danny Fulgencio.
The Junius Heights Historic District is working to move the old streetcar from the old Spaghetti Warehouse building to a new location.
Streetcar 707 has been donated to the historic district by the new owners of the building where Spaghetti Warehouse was until it closed in 2019.
Now the historic district is looking to renovate the streetcar and place it in a permanent location where the community can enjoy it.
“This significant installation will have a long-lasting impact: welcoming neighborhood residents and attracting visitors to Dallas’ largest historic community,” according to a Junius Heights Historic District invitation to an upcoming fundraiser. “It will certainly become a key attraction for new celebrations and memories.”
Until renovations can begin, the historic district needs to pay for a place to store the streetcar. The cost of moving it from its current location to the storage facility will cost about $20,000.
So along with City Council members Jesse Moreno, Paula Blackmon and Paul Ridley, the historic district is co-hosting a fundraising event March 7 at Garden Café.
We reached out to the Junius Heights Historic District for more information about this effort, but they did not respond to our request for comment.
The Advocate reported in 2021 that the streetcar would return to East Dallas. Robert Lavie, the manager of West End Capital Management, acquired the Spaghetti Warehouse building and agreed to donate the car to the historic district if the board could move it out of the building.
Streetcar 707, built in 1925 or 1926, was initially auctioned off along with other Spaghetti Warehouse items. But when the winning bidder found out how much it would cost to remove and rebuild a part of the brick wall as part of the process to get the streetcar out of the building, the bidder decided to forego the streetcar’s removal.
The streetcar line was key in developing Junius Heights, a neighborhood with a large collection of historic Craftsman-, Prairie- and Tudor-style homes.
