Crownrich Lane

Dallas builder J. Roger Crownrich has never lived on the neighborhood street named after him. However, it is two-and-a-half acres of land he won’t forget. Crownrich discovered the empty plot between Lakewood and Westlake soon after he had built his own home on Westgrove, and he decided to buy it and turn it into nine individual lots. That, as he remembers, was around 1955. Because the street was so narrow — current resident Susan Vincent says “people think it’s just an alley” — Crownrich built the houses only on one side, and sold them for $30,000 each. The street originally was called Contemporary Haven, but as luck would have it, one of the first homes was sold to then-Dallas councilwoman Calvert Collins. “At the title company she said to me, ‘Mr. Crownrich, do you mind if I change the name on the street?’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter,’” he recalls. Sure enough, four or five months later when Crownrich drove by, a new name was on the street sign — Crownrich Lane. Asked if it has changed much since then, Crownrich wistfully responds: “No, it really hasn’t.”