Best of 2021: East Dallas’ Historic Mrs. Baird’s Bakery Rises Again

[Editor’s Note: While the CandysDirt.com team takes a hot minute this holiday season to recharge the ol’ Energizers, we’re serving up our very favorite stories from 2021. Enjoy!]

Karen: Wow, this one was hard. Picking my favorite historic preservation post came down to the East Quarter neighborhood and Mrs. Baird’s. But in the end, this one resonated with our readers on another level, and the fact that a small boy driving by it almost daily remembered how beautiful this building was and what potential it held, won out. It also demonstrates that it takes just one person to make a difference in historic preservation.

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Mrs. Baird’s is a name near and dear to the hearts of Texans. It all started with Ninnie Baird, who built a thriving company when the term “businesswoman” did not exist. She did it because she had no choice. 

In 1908, as her ailing husband’s health took a turn for the worse, she started baking bread and selling it out of her home in Fort Worth. 

Baird’s sons helped out with baking and did the deliveries — first on foot, and as the word spread, they hopped on their bikes to get to more customers faster. It wasn’t much longer before they were loading the baked goods onto a horse-drawn wagon. By 1928 the bakery was one of the largest facilities in Texas with four locations and a fleet of trucks. Mrs. Baird’s eventually became the biggest independent baking company in the country.

A Dallas Expansion for Mrs. Baird’s

In 1928 Mrs. Baird’s expanded to Dallas. The location at 1401 North Carroll Avenue in East Dallas was chosen because it was close to railroads. Not only could ingredients be delivered, but the bakery goods could also be easily shipped. 

This location is quite the preservation success story, especially as you seldom see a commercial manufacturing building in a prime part of Dallas escaping demolition.

Preservation Dallas provided the following information:

Roland W. Baird, son of Ninnie Baird, the bakery founder, announced in February 1928 that designs for the $250,000 plant would be drawn by a New York firm that specialized in bakeries. The two-story solid brick commercial building that was built featured handsome Prairie School detailing and opened on February 28, 1929, producing 3,500 loaves of bread per hour. 

Demand grew, and a $12,000 addition designed by Bertram C. Hill was placed in 1934 on the side and back of the structure, expanded the cooling, wrapping, and loading areas. Population growth after World War II outstripped production capacity, so Mrs. Baird’s built a new facility on North Central Expressway, which opened in 1954 (now demolished). The historic building was sold in 1956 and housed a book cover manufacturing facility and a fabric company. The Mrs. Baird’s building was listed on the National Register in 1995, so it is eligible for both state and national preservation tax credits.

Both the 1919 and 1937 Mrs. Baird’s Bakeries in Fort Worth, as well as the 1954 Dallas bakery, have been demolished, leaving this as the earliest Mrs. Baird’s building in the Metroplex. The handsome bones of this solidly-built structure await re-development, but the current high sale price and lack of landmark protections for the site could forever banish memories of the smell of freshly-baked bread on this corner.

From Dough to Bows

The building was home to Dallas Bias Fabrics until a few years ago and has sat vacant since then. Enter Mark Marynick, who grew up in Dallas and has a particular affinity for this building.

“I have driven by that building since I was a kid because my father is a doctor at Baylor, “Marynick said. “I remember going into it when it was Dallas Bias Fabrics with my mom once.”

Marynick grew up around architecture and building. His pal and former business partner Porter is an architect and the son of the legendary J. Wilson Fuqua. Marynick studied visual and environmental studies and economics at Harvard, so it’s not surprising running a business full of craftsmen was in his future.

He and Fuqua purchased Casci Ornamental Plaster, another venerable Dallas business founded in 1930, a few years ago. Marynick has since bought out Fuqua. The company won the Craftsmanship Award from Preservation Dallas in 2019 and has been a go-to resource for preservationists for decades. 

Saving Mrs. Baird’s For Good

Casci is not far from the Mrs. Baird’s location, so Marynick was again driving by the old factory regularly. It wasn’t long before he decided he had to take action to preserve the building and give it a new purpose.  Sadly, even though this location of Mrs. Baird’s is on the National Register, it could have been demolished. Considering the scraping and new construction going on in East Dallas, this building certainly needed a white knight to ensure preservation. 

“It’s a great location for us,” Marynick said. “Casci does a lot of work downtown and in the Park Cities, so it’s perfect. Many people had tried to do something with it, but it’s a manufacturing building at the end of the day.”    

Marynick has big plans, and when they come to fruition, he hopes the new location will become a design destination much like Jamb in London, which is his inspiration.

“That building has so much potential,” Marynick said. “The genius of the architect is that he left the outside with room for additions.” 

The building is basically a shell now, and everything from plumbing to HVAC has to be installed. Marynick has plans to add ornamentation to the exterior, including a stately metal gate, and lanterns. Extensive landscaping is also part of the design. 

“Historic buildings add to the depth of a city, and Dallas needs that depth,” Marynick said. “I just could not bear to see this building get demolished.”

I think Mrs. Baird must be smiling down on Mark Marynick, and I cannot wait to see the results of his endeavors.