Why is part of the city's street grid oriented towards the river and the rest oriented north-south?
Posted by stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit | Dallas | View on Reddit | 37 comments
If you have ever looked at a map of the city, or just gotten lost because the street you were on suddenly veered off at a weird angle, you may have realized the city's streets seem to clash in parts. Part of the streets in Dallas (Oak Lawn, Uptown, Downtown, and South Dallas) are oriented towards the Trinity, but the rest of the city is just a standard north-south grid.
I realize its not uncommon in many cities built near a body of water- for instance in Seattle, it was because the original owners of the land grants couldn't agree on what directions they wanted the streets to go on their property. I figure its the same for Dallas, but I was wondering if there was an interesting story behind it. Anyone know?
bentelamon@reddit
I actually did a research project on this about ten years ago. As you noticed, there are three primary grids.
The original grid laid out by John Neely Bryan and John Grigsby when the city was founded are oriented towards the original route of the Trinity River.
The next sections to develop, specifically East Dallas and Cedar Springs (originally separate cities) were laid out at a 45 degree angle to the cardinal directions. This was common at the time in areas controlled by Spain or with strong Spanish influence.
Later developments are laid out aligned with the cardinal directions as is common in the United States. Specifically the Peters Colony sold off much of the land in square mile sections. Particularly in North Dallas you can still see this.
Naturally features like the Trinity River and the railroads disrupt the grid and help determine where they intersect. The railroad companies were basically given as much land as they wanted because their business was so important, so they did not have to follow the grid and instead followed the landscape.
dchirs@reddit
The layout of the plots shown in this 1884 map corresponds to a really surprising degree with today's street layout.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4033d.la000945/?r=0.225,0.457,0.352,0.164,0
Why do Inwood and Mockingbird turn from North-South to NE-SW to North-South again? Because that's where the earlier Dickerson Parker claim met the later surveys.
dchirs@reddit
Original John Neely Bryan survey:
https://dallaslibrary2.org/dallashistory/murphyandbolanz/Block1/bb1p25f.pdf
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
It's wild to see that a railroad has always been intended to run down Pacific. I always just assumed DART chose that street at random (somewhat jokingly) to run the tracks down.
dchirs@reddit
It's even named after the original railroad! The Texas-Pacific.
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
Well I feel dumb now
Papalbullballs@reddit
The 45 degree angle and north-south is because of the abstracts (land surveys) … just go look at the dallascad online map and turn on that layer
DonkeeJote@reddit
Check out the Law of the Indies. It's Spanish colonial rules which dictate the 45 degrees.
The DCAD surveys were several decades after that.
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
Is that why Knox-Henderson seems to be at the whim of the railroads that bordered it?
bentelamon@reddit
Yes, Central Expressway follows the route of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, the first railroad to come to Dallas and a huge driver of the city’s growth.
The Katy Trail also follows an old railroad route, The Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad (or KT for short), so the Knox area is laid out to make use of the area where the two rail lines meet.
jerikl@reddit
https://www.bcworkshop.org/posts/dallas-city-grids
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
This is FANTASTIC. Thank you!
jerikl@reddit
Thanks! I thought so, too.
214forever@reddit
It’s just what you described: the old city was oriented along the Trinity, then with the advent of highways, we reoriented north/south to align with them.
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
Oh, gotcha. So the highway system was the cause for realignment?
saxmanB737@reddit
The grids were laid out long before the highways were rammed through.
214forever@reddit
Not in a north/south orientation. Ever look at an old map of Dallas?
https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/dallas_1920.jpg
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
Makes you think - back in the day, it must have been a major pain in the ass for the Federal government to figure out how to run US HWY 80, 77, 75, and 175 through Dallas with all of our streets changing direction every two miles.
You can usually tell where one of those highways was re-routed onto a purpose-built avenue or boulevard later, because it suddenly cuts across the grain of the surrounding streets. Los Angeles is full of upgraded roads like this as well.
CommodoreVF2@reddit
They just looked for the lowest value neighborhoods, mainly occupied by POC, and plowed them down for highways.
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
You are 100% correct- for the interstates and freeways. Most of the US Highways were on surface level streets back then.
US 80 (Jefferson Blvd, later Commerce) went through Oak Cliff (which was white then) into Downtown, and then through East Dallas (which was also pretty white).
US 77 (Harry Hines) did run through what was Little Mexico (now Victory Park), but then worked it's way south through Oak Cliff.
The one that most likely led to demolition was US-75. Many African Americans in Dallas lived in State Thomas (now Uptown), Deep Ellum, and South Dallas. US-75 was routed along Good-Latimer Expwy before Central Expressway was built on top of the old H&T railbed, but it is entirely conceivable that homes and businesses were cleared to construct Good-Latimer.
Now, what happened later with US 75/175, I-45, I-30, I-35E, and Woodall Rogers, is a crime to all of the POC who had their entire lives upended, and I doubt the city of Dallas will ever be able to truly repay the families that were affected.
dchirs@reddit
You can see in the map below from 1905 that Oak Cliff was laid out from the beginning north/south, and that northern development (Highland Park and M Streets) is also proceeding that way.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dallas,_Texas_Map_1905.jpg
Overall development then continued outward generally along the north-south alignment for 50 years before the highways came through.
214forever@reddit
More or less. There are parts of Oak Cliff that were oriented north/south, but aligning with the Dallas street grid wasn’t a priority since you had to cross the Trinity to get there
Hembalaya@reddit
This doesn’t make any sense - there’s large parts of the city that were laid out prior to highways (Oak Cliff, Park Cities, Hollywood/Santa Monica, etc) that are on the north/south grid
SandMan83000@reddit
Hollywood/Santa Monica is not laid out north south
Hembalaya@reddit
Ahhh you’re right - I was thinking historic prewar neighborhoods and threw it in there. Gridded, but not north south
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
That's kind of what I was thinking when it came to the North-South grid. A lot of those parts of Northern, Eastern, and far-South Dallas were built during the post-war population boom.
214forever@reddit
Yep, that’s what I meant. Oak Cliff was the one exception by a lot of the earliest north/south streets, but they were never concerned with aligning with the Dallas grid because you still had to cross over the Trinity
Majsharan@reddit
It was actually the railroad that caused the reorientation not highways
214forever@reddit
Yes and no. Railroads were present in the early 20th century but the city continued building along its original street grid.
It wasn’t until Greenville Avenue was built as the first “highway” (of sorts, it was a regional thoroughfare but not a freeway in the modern sense) that the the first north/south oriented streets appeared in the late 1910s/early 1920s. Ditto Preston Road, which re-oriented the Park Cities grid and Preston Hollow.
Majsharan@reddit
I actually have the history of Dallas the printed as part of the WPA in the 30s. In it the edge of Dallas was what’s now pacific avenue in downtown which was where the pacific railroad used to run. Everything to east of that toward the river was in one grid and everything on the other was in a separate grid
CommodoreVF2@reddit
My part of the city, northeast of White Rock, is oriented 45 degrees also. It parallels Garland Road.
Sanchastayswoke@reddit
I am just guessing here: but my guess would be that the neighborhoods you mentioned are much older and actually were built based on needing water from the Trinity, or like commerce/trade type stuff down by the river. And the north south part of the city is newer and “planned”, if you will.
dchirs@reddit
John Neely Bryan bought a narrow plat along the water for the initial founding of Dallas. Main St, Elm , Commerce, Houston St, Market St, etc. are all aligned with this grid - Elm, Commerce and Main eventually extended way past his property into Deep Ellum.
The John Grigsby plat that was adjacent to Bryan's was oriented at a different angle, which is why the bend in the grid occurs around the Arts District and streets like Ross, Live Oak, and Gaston go Northeast.
ApocolypseJoe@reddit
It's a confluence of reasons.
The city of Dallas is made up of dozens of annexations. Most of what currently makes up Dallas was not actually Dallas from the start, but many smaller territories. There were multiple enclaves, including Natives, Spanish, French, and African American , and they all disaligned their streets from each other in order to create very significant boundaries between their territories.
The Trinity River is also not in its original location. That's why you have huge bridges and a huge flood plain going through the middle of the city. They literally moved the river so that they could expand the city, which quite frankly was probably the stupidest thing they could have done. Mother nature will always win. So if you have a lot of water infiltration problems with your foundation, that's probably why.
stickbreak_arrowmake@reddit (OP)
The Trinity originally ran near the Triple Underpass/Stemmons FWY, right?
ApocolypseJoe@reddit
Yes, heading south before turning basically running up against what's now Houston St, right by Dealy plaza was all river. Flashback Dallas has compiled a bunch of the old maps and photos from the construction back then.
duns25894@reddit
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dallas annexed several neighboring cities, including Old East Dallas in 1890 and Oak Cliff in 1903, both of which were initially separate jurisdictions with their own distinct street grid systems. As Dallas expanded, it absorbed these areas but retained their original layouts due to the high cost and logistical challenges of reconfiguring the street grids to match the existing Dallas system. This resulted in the city's patchwork street design, reflecting the unique grids of these former independent cities.