Exchange Park: Dallas’ Cutting Edge Development of the 1950s
Share News:
David Preziosi, FAICP, Hon. AIA Dallas
Executive Director, Preservation Dallas
When Exchange Park opened in 1956 just a few miles north of downtown Dallas it was ahead of its time. Exchange Park broke barriers with its relatively new concept of mixed-use development with office towers, shops, restaurants, and even a bowling alley in one connected, temperature-controlled indoor environment. It was really the precursor to the modern indoor mall. NorthPark Center was still nine years away.
While it was a groundbreaking development, Exchange Park has quite a fascinating history that will soon be lost.
UT Southwestern, the site’s current owner, is planning to level the massive complex of over 1 million square feet in early 2022 for some as yet unknown future development. They, of course, could hold on to the historic buildings and work to reuse them when they have a new plan for the site. There are plenty of historic tax incentives available that could help them with the rehabilitation of the buildings.
Historic tax incentives? Dallas is no stranger to that, with over $1.5 billion in tax incentives used for the rehabilitation of historic buildings in Dallas in the past 20 years.
The Man With The Plan
William Blakely was the man with the vision that transformed the 120 wooded acres near the intersection of Harry Hines Boulevard and Mockingbird Lane into a completely planned mixed-use commercial development landscaped as a park.
Blakley proclaimed, “Exchange Park will be a self-contained business community – America’s first completely integrated and weather–controlled commercial development.”
It took three years of planning to develop the project with architects and engineers at the Dallas firm of Lane, Gamble & Associates preparing the plans. What was built was only a small portion of a much larger planned development that was to include additional office buildings, more retail shops and services, two department stores, a hotel, and residential towers.
The press labeled the development as a “city-within-a-city” and the “city of tomorrow.” Even though the complete development was never fully realized, the portion that did get built was definitely ahead of its time with unique features that set a trend for similar future development across the country.
Banking on The Future
Exchange Bank occupied the first office tower completed in Exchange Park in 1956. The 14-story building was a clean-line modern design that featured continuous strips of windows with bright yellow panels in between floors since painted a charcoal gray.
Taking the environment into account, projecting sun visors were designed into the façade, a new concept for the time, to reduce the direct sun on the windows that would heat up the interior in the summer.
Just as cutting edge as the exterior was, a new concept of movable wall partitions, which could be rearranged overnight to create new office spaces, snap-in air outlets and light fixtures were used along with unique floor construction, which allowed wiring and outlets to be easily rearranged to meet the requirements of new tenants.
According to The Dallas Morning News, Exchange Bank was the first office building in the country to incorporate this complete modular flexibility.
Braniff Airways was the next major tenant of Exchange Park when they moved into the site’s second office tower in 1958.
The 10-story building was strikingly similar to Exchange Bank and used the same sun visors on the main facade. However, the Braniff building differed with bright blue panels, which still retain their original color, a rear façade with a different shading system and a top floor that featured a landscaped terrace for Braniff executives with views to nearby Love Field. The interior featured the same flexible wall system as the bank tower.
The two office towers were connected with an enclosed air-conditioned space that contained shops, services, and restaurants. The developer called it a “weathered conditioned street.” It had a surface of brick and exposed concrete scattered throughout with interesting patterns of varying shades and sizes of exposed aggregate.
A series of large skylights provided natural light to the space and the built-in planters below, which contained lush foliage. This concept served as a forerunner to the modern mall, and one can see similar concepts in the original section of Northpark.
Built to Grow
Ample parking was provided around the complex with heavily landscaped parking lots and a parking garage. To reduce commercial traffic around Exchange Park, a 3,600-foot-long tunnel system was built under the complex, which provided space to unload delivery trucks and allow service vehicles to operate without being seen on the site or interfere with the automobile traffic movement at the ground level.
The third and final office tower constructed at Exchange Park was for the new corporate home of Frito-Lay. It opened in 1966 with much fanfare that included Joan Crawford appearing for the ribbon-cutting. She was married to the former CEO of Pepsi-Cola, which merged with Frito-Lay in 1965. He passed away in 1959, and after his death, Crawford was appointed to the Board of Directors. Her picture hung in the board room of Frito-Lay at Exchange Park.
For the Frito-Lay Tower, Lane, Gamble & Associates departed from the design of the earlier towers by eschewing the attached sun visors for a clean glass-walled cube of 17-stories connected to the mall. The building featured a private rooftop club, a medieval pub, and a large cafeteria. The tower also included an elaborately landscaped garden area with a five-ton copper water sculpture by Wilbert Verhelst.
Over the years, there were many establishments located in Exchange Park. However, two became well-known after they opened in 1959.
The first was La Tunisia, which was one of the most unique restaurant concepts in Dallas. Guests entered through a loggia surrounded by an exotic garden of tropical plants and palm trees into the main dining room. Hundreds of yards of hand-woven silk fabric hung from the ceiling and adorned the walls to give the effect of being inside a huge tent in the Arabian desert. There were even lights built into the ceiling that changed throughout the evening to represent desert lights.
The same Los Angeles firm who supervised the building of Disneyland designed the restaurant space, which was touted as having the “romantic charm of a North African desert oasis” and hailed as “one of the best examples of interior design in the nation.”
The other establishment was the Mickey Mantle Bowling Center which featured 32 lanes and was the first to carry his name. Mantle even moved his family to Dallas to be close to the new center. Over 10,000 people came for the opening, including notable figures like Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Dorothy Malone, and more.
Today, Exchange Park remains very close to the original design with slight changes and updates over the years for modern conveniences. However, the use has changed dramatically.
Braniff moved their headquarters to D/FW airport in 1976, and Frito-Lay moved theirs to Plano in 1985. Exchange Bank was bought out and became Texas American Bank before it closed, and now Chase Bank occupies that space. La Tunisia was replaced in 1972 by Arthur’s West restaurant, which eventually closed, and the Mickey Mantle Bowling Center has been long gone.
Exchange Park changed hands several times, and in 2008 UT Southwestern purchased the complex and expanded their campus with offices for the UT Southwestern Medical School. Gone from the mall are the shops and services, replaced by medical offices and a food court; however, the original skylights and “street” of brick and patterned concrete remain.
Cutting Edge Regardless of Era
When Exchange Park opened, it was cutting-edge with its concept of mixing retail and office space and its architectural design featuring an exterior sun shading system and modular flexibility for the office towers. In 1956, Architectural South magazine heralded Exchange Park as “an entirely new concept of the business community of the future — a city within a city, containing all of the facilities necessary to provide goods and services under the most favorable conditions-comfort and convenience without congestion.”
Soon, Exchange Park will be a footnote in history and another significant loss of an important piece of Dallas’ architectural history. Unfortunately, UT Southwestern only sees the dirt as valuable and not the office towers and retail space complex. They are taking the familiar road that many developers do here with old buildings by scraping the site clean for new development.
In the process, our architectural heritage is lost, and copious amounts of building materials, a staggering amount due to the sheer size of the over 1 million-square-foot complex, are carted off to the landfill, taking up valuable space. The energy and raw materials that were used to create the massive complex will be lost, and precious new raw materials and energy will be needed to build something new.
It is a shame for an organization that cares so much for people’s health to not to work harder to care for the environment’s health by working to reuse the existing buildings of Exchange Park and not wasting so much to build new ones eventually.
27 Comments
Leave a Comment
Thank you for this fabulous writeup. I am sharing this with Flashback Dallas.
Wow, sad that a mid-century modern isn’t worth retrofitting. And it looks so clean and formally inviting, as a hospital is supposed to be!
We all know at the heart of the matter, Dallas is hopeless. Greed and endless poorly-constructed ‘developments’ have been the essence of the Dallas Way for decades. With a few notable exceptions (that we haven’t already demoed) this city fails to understand its own history, its architectural heritage and the larger world of good design, sustainability and what it really means to be ‘world class.’ I love Dallas but it truly is Texas at its worst in so many ways.
Well said!
My Father is in the first photo of La Tunisia. He turns 95 this month and the opening of La Tunisia was brought him to the states from Monterrey, Mexico. He and other workers were solicited from the Hotel Ancira which is still in Monterrey to come to the states to work at La Tunisia opening. My father says it was a senator but doesn’t recall his name that got the paperwork necessary and housed them in a house on Inwood and Lovers. He has the original dining plate, his waiter card, postcards and swizzle sticks from the restaurant. He shared his story with with DMAHL. He has some great stories including one about Jack Ruby.
Erika, I’m sure I know your father! My father bought La Tunisia from Senator Bill Blakley soon after it was built. I have many fond memories of La Tunisia and the people who worked there. I wish your father well!
Originally the mall had flowing water and small fountains inder the skylights. They were replaced with plants years ago due to foundation leaks and plumbing issues.
My mother and father met at exchange park. She worked as a secratary for Mr. William Blakely. My father had an office there and had locked himself out. They met when my mom had to go unlock the door for him.
I have heard all kinds of stories about the bowling alley and the resturaunt. What a shame to tear it all down.
That was a most beautiful office there with a mall like atmosphere. I rem the French cafe was my favorite place to have lunch when I could afford it. They had a dentist office, dress shop and restaurants. When I worked at Lone Star Life Ins, the company had the florist shop in the mall deliver a carnation in a vase to our desk on our birthday. . I worked there in the 1972 at Lone Star Life Ins and later at Frito Lay.
I worked there, at the former Frito-Lay tower, in 1998-99 with American General/USLife. I thought it was a great place to be, back then. I’ll certainly miss it, if it gets razed.
I think the other two, towers, were AT&T and Chase Bank bank then, in 1998/1999.
My father ( In 1966 thru 1974) had his business called The Institute for Computing Sciences on the Mall between the Frito Lay Tower and Exchange Bank.) They taught computer programming ) Later as they expanded into other areas, Dad hired Zig Ziggler to assist in Sales Training. I worked in 1970 thru 1972 for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Ross Perot’s Computer Services company in the Computer Output (COM) Microfilm Dept. They had approximately 250 employees and were growing! The Data Center IBM 360 and then IBM 370 mainframes, were on the 2nd Floor of the Exchange Bank Bld. and the Executive Offices were on the 13th floor. I often met my father for lunch on the mall at either French restaurant or Johnny’s BBQ.
My father as well was a business owner at Exchange Park. He owned the barbershop I remember as a little girl Getting to go to the snack room i’m playing hide and go seek with my brother throughout the building. I wish there were pictures of my dad‘s shop if you have any please post them. My dad‘s shop was unique, he did a lot of famous people when they would come in town probably because they could park underground and nobody would see them. My dad passed away when I was only nine years old my mom kept the shop running for short time by my oldest brother. Thank you for sharing!!
In the summer of 1963, I started working in Exchange Bank’s basement for Girard life Insurance. It has been so long ago (my first job) that I have forgotten many things about it, so thanks for the above article.
I did not remember the name, “La Tunisia” but I do remember the restaurant that had the extremely tall doorman with a tall fez on his head. I’m thinking that was the one, am I correct? I think I still have a picture of me and my date at the restaurant. Thanks for the memories.
So sad it will soon be gone. It was a great place to work.
My father was a VP at Blakely’s insurance company, a major tenant. When I was a young teenager I got a summer job working in the file department. I spent my lunch hour roaming the basement corridors of the building. Ross Perot’s EDS had offices there, too. We could tell the employees – they all wore dark suits, white shirts, dark ties. Years later, as a summer letter carrier, I delivered mail to Perot’s home.
I now recall further – the insurance company had been downtown with Johnny Cumming’s Bar-B-Que in a sort of shack next door. Peanut shells on the floor and school desks as seating. When the company moved, so did Cummings. When Blakely ran for Senate against John Tower, Cummings catered the event. It was held in the ground floor of one of the Exchange Park buildings. The food was wonderful. 62 years later I remember how good. The company Dad worked for bought a smaller one in Scranton where my parents lived and I was born. We moved to Dallas in 1950. In 1972, I interviewed for a job with a Philadelphia law firm. The lawyer saw I waS from Dallas and commented that he had handled the sale of a Scranton insurance company to one in Dallas. He described Bill Blakely as if he had been a cowboy, recounting Blakely’s cowboy boots and how he propped them on the snooty lawyer’s French writing table.
My Mom had an employment agency, called Park Personnel Service at Exchange Park, 217 Garden Mall, in the 60-70 era. Her office was across the mall from Mary Kay Cosmetics and next door to Mary Kay was Nila’s Dress Shop. Mom did all the employment searches for Braniff, Frito Lay and Exchange Bank. She knew everyone at the Park. Her name was Shirley Welch, at that time. Every Christmas, Mom would bring home a huge gift from Frito Lay. And later, met Omar Lennen at the mall, married him after Tim passed away. I have very fond memories of Exchange Park, loved going into Mary Kay’s shop, browsing the make-up my Mom would buy from Mary Kay. I loved watching everyone at the mall. Good times in my young life, grade school, to teenage years here at the mall.
Is there any history of the church that was in exchange park complex. I know it was there because I managed the demo’d and abate of most of one of the tower.
When I joined Texas Instruments in 1962 as a young engineer we were located in the second building. I remember the tall door man at La Tunisia with the top hat. I was at work when my wife called to tell me JFK had been shot.
Offered by Stan Lehnhardt
I was an ENT surgery resident in the area at UT Southwestern from 1969 to 1974. Many, many happy memories!!
My father and mother met there at Exchange bank. My mother worked at Frito Lay. My father designed the US Post office in Exchange Bank and had his architectural office on the 7th floor called Adams and Adams Architects. Me and my brother and sisters basically grew up there in the late 60’s and 70’s. It was a wonderful time! I remember the greatest ham sandwiches on Kaiser bread from the cafeteria there. And a Mediterranean restaurant with huge Mural of a Mediterranean scene with dolphins etc. anybody remember the name of that place? It wasn’t the La Tunisia restaurant I know. I also recall the giant 747 models in the lobby of Braniff building. Thought what an amazing place! Now, what a terrible waste and historical crime let alone a disappointment that Dallas allowed to destroy such beautiful buildings with such a rich historical legacy! Family historian, Matt Adams
My mom and dad owned the hair salon there. Elouise Dawson passed almost 40 years ago, but I feel she would be so sad to see it all implode. I worked there several summers in high school (kept me off the streets) and have so many wonderful memories that came alive with your comments. Thanks! ~Becky
The buildings were leveled on Oct 1st, 2023. The buildings may be gone but at least memories are preserved online.
Yes, you are so correct! It lives on and I definitely encourage people who care about our special place/Exchange Park to document their experiences and places we so loved/cherish there! So that we all can share and enjoy that uniquely old Dallas atmosphere. Not to mention, the historical reasons for documenting. I have truly enjoyed all the people’s comments who have shared them. . With that said, we must remember that this is yet another example of the lack of foresight and vision of the city leaders. We must help encourage our fellow Dallasites to put an end to this constant unrelenting and erasing/destruction of our great architectural heritage! They can always find a way if they choose the city to preserve our historic buildings and rich past. We must demand a higher standard from them. Exchange Park continues to live on in my family. Whenever we get together, we go over the scrapbook of memories I have compiled. It will always be a very special place in our hearts and memories! Matt Adams family historian
Just a clarification on my earlier comments they are my opinion only of course Also a humble request to any commenters, please mention any businesses/restaurants etc. Exchange Park you recall. In my opinion again, I think it will help others trying to historical research and scrapbooking that magical place we know.
We were married June 3, 1972 at the lovely chapel in Exchange Park. Wonderful memories!
Good Day Exchange Parkers, I remembered the medieval pub in the basement of a Frito-Lay tower. It was called, “ The Errant Knight”! The other room up on the top was called the “Sun Room”. There was another club in basement of Exchange Bank Tower, called” The Executive Club”. My father had many meetings in both over the years. So, I hope I helped other’s researching the restaurants and clubs/pubs that were located there. Always want to help people doing historical research especially, our old special place, Exchange Park! I still have faith in Dallas to keep and preserve some of unique treasures such as Old Red courthouse etc. I’m very Pleased with Dallas leaders on trying to preserve whatever they can. By the way you can even find some old videos on exchange Park on the many different sites now. Just found 3 of them on universities website. Happy hunting to all! Family Historian, Matt
P.S. Would love to see pics of the chapel if anyone has them.
Howdy Exchange Parkers, there was one more business located in the Frito Lay Tower I recall, it was the Bonanza Restaurant offices. Matt