The house at 6735 Westlake Ave. mostly is famous for its role as Pamela Barnes’s house on “Dallas,” the TV show. The home’s former owners used to host screenings of the show, and the house is recognized to this day by people from all over the world.
Not to downplay the glamor and cultural significance of “Dallas,” which likely will be in syndication in the farthest reaches of the globe indefinitely. But there is more than just cheesy TV celebrity to this house, which is on the Lakewood Home Festival tour this weekend.
It was built in 1927 for Herbert Marcus Sr., co-founder of Neiman Marcus department store and father of Stanley Marcus. The elder Marcus’s widow, Minnie Lichtensein Marcus, lived in the house until her death in 1979. Throughout those years, and in the 1930s especially, the Marcuses welcomed many fashion and business dignitaries into their home.
In June 1936, the Marcuses threw a party for the Texas Centennial. Elizabeth Arden, Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow and Vogue editor Edna Woolman Chase were among the fashion elite at the Friday evening cocktail party. Chase, who was editor-in-chief of Vogue from 1914-1942, would visit Dallas again in 1940 to accept the Neiman-Marcus Distinguished Style Award.
Guests at a 1937 luncheon at the house on Oakwood Lane, now Westlake Ave., included the New York Morgans and the wife of physician Alfred Hess.
