Historic Church at Cole and Armstrong in Uptown Demolished to Make Room For Mixed-Use Development
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Goodbye, little church in the city.
According to some historians, the church at 4501 Cole Avenue in Uptown was more than 100 years old. The structure, which was at one time the Fairland Methodist Episcopal Church, was most recently a Chips Old Fashioned Hamburgers. The sanctuary dates back to 1902 and was razed yesterday to make room for the new Lincoln Knox development that will include new retail and a Trader Joe’s, as well as 165 luxury mid-rise apartments. David O’Dell managed to capture the video of the demolition, which is bittersweet for the community.
I suppose it’s comment on the versatility and longevity of the historic church that it housed several congregations before its most recent iterations as restaurants, but the bulldozer of progress doesn’t stop no matter the nostalgia.
This is just the beginning of site preparation for the $38.6 million development from Hill & Wilkinson. The structure should be ready for tenants in September of 2015.
Oh no! The Old Church is gone???? So many SMU memories.
Developers like that have a lot if money and make a lot of money. There should be a city ordinance requiring an exhaustive attempt to move and relocate historical structures. It's chump change to them.
From Tequila Sunrises to Thai cuisine, to burgers… and a few things in between. So long old friend.
That crane is like a creature from a Star Wars war! Why could this not have been incorporated into the new development???
I watched from my office window bummer…I have many fun memories of that building
Some of my best memories were there. So sad to see it gone. Back in the day, it was the place to be.
I don't know why, but it makes me feel so sad.
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I hate the way our city continues to knock down historic locations in order to put up (In the case of the Hard Rock Cafe) absolutely nothing. Look at the 100 year old plus bank building that was recently knocked down at Elm & Cesar Chavez to make way for more traffic. No effort was even made to relocate the building. We need to appreciate and incorporate the historical before its all gone.
Tearing down history is always sad.
It is very sad
Just last night PBS did a documentary on NYC's Penn Station and how it's demolition in 1963 galvanized the likes of Jacquie Kennedy and others to become our modern preservation movement.
But alas – seems it's still the same.
Thank goodnees for Old East Dallas and Oak Cliff and how these areas really appreciate the history.
When I was in my "tweens", my sister used to take me out as her "front" to my parents so she could go hang out with the hippies in Lee Park. I was born in '62 and by the time I was pushing my teens I looked old enough to get into bars since the drinkign age was 18.
I have a vague memory of drinking in this church back in the early 70's – could that have been possible?
The Travis Street Electric Co was in the building where Sur La Table is now, I think
Ahhh the memories !
Peter is right on the mark… especially the example of the Hard Rock Café lot which is still sitting empty. There's a book called Lost Dallas that is well worth reading. It covers many of our architectural treasures that were torn down to make way for new projects, many of which never materialized. Many of our historic downtown buildings were torn down to be replaced by something better, only to be eventually turned into parking lots. Like it or not, that's the free market at work, I suppose. Look at Boston, NYC, and other great cities in the U.S. and around the world – they truly appreciate the history of their buildings.
Cry me a river…..so-called preservationists are always the first to yell halt to anyone else's plans but the last ones to come to the table with money (their own that is, they are happy to expropriate the proprty and zoning rights of others).
Not sure this could really be labeled as "historic" just because something is old does not make it significant, (See the St Paul on Routh, that is significant) but an old church that served as a burger joint for a few decades ??? Sure it is sad, I remember Chips being one of my favorite places when I first moved to Dallas, burgers and old video games upstairs,….etc but afterall this is Dallas the city that moves forward, this city always was built on some idea or progress, good and bad we are who we are, and really who we are is business minded city ready to re-assemble and reinvent anything.