DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just passing it along. Back in 1857, what would one day become one of Dallas's most elegant addresses was nothing more than a muddy country lane. A Swiss immigrant named Henri Boll looked at that lane, thought of the land he'd left behind, and gave it a name in honor of his native country.
Swiss Avenue. Humble beginnings for a boulevard that had no idea what was coming. Nearly fifty years went by.
Then a cotton gin manufacturer by the name of R. S. Munger — born in 1854, and a man who clearly had a vision — looked at that old road and saw something else entirely.
In 1905, Munger developed a 140-acre residential area called Munger Place, and Swiss Avenue got lengthened and paved right along with it. Now, Munger wasn't the kind of man who left things to chance. He imposed building requirements to make sure his neighborhood looked the part.
We're talking a minimum construction cost of ten thousand dollars and a mandatory two-story height. This was going to be an exclusive development, and he wanted everyone to know it just by lookin' at it. But here's the thing that makes Swiss Avenue genuinely interesting — Munger held the line on cost and height, but he turned architects and residents loose on style.
You want Tudor Revival? Build it. Georgian Revival?
Go right ahead. You're a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie style? That's welcome here too.
So what you ended up with was a street that felt unified and grand and at the same time looked completely different from house to house. That's a harder trick to pull off than it sounds. The very first residence to go up in the Munger Place addition was Dr.
R. W. Baird's Classical Revival home at 5303 Swiss Avenue, erected in 1905.
And once that first house stood, the rest followed. By 1920, about two hundred elegant homes had been built in Munger Place. The people who lived in them were prominent lawyers, bankers, merchants, industrialists, and doctors — the kind of neighborhood where every front porch told you something had gone right for somebody.
But grand streets have long memories, and they also have hard seasons. In the years that followed, Swiss Avenue declined. Some of those two hundred elegant homes were demolished.
Others were carved up into apartments, their original character slowly disappearing room by room. It could have ended there. Often does.
But the Historic Preservation League and a group of committed citizens decided it wouldn't. Their efforts pushed the city of Dallas to act, and in 1973 Dallas designated the Swiss Avenue area as the city's very first historic district. That muddy 1857 country lane — named for a homeland an immigrant carried with him — had survived long enough to be worth saving.
Henri Boll probably never saw that coming. But then, neither did anyone else.
What the marker says
This wide boulevard was a muddy country lane in 1857, when Swiss immigrant Henri Boll named it in honor of his native land. Swiss Avenue was lengthened and paved as part of Munger Place, an exclusive 140-acre residential area developed in 1905 by cotton gin manufacturer R. S. Munger (1854 - 1923). To assure the unified appearance of the neighborhood, Munger imposed such building requirements as $10,000 minimum cost and two-story height. At the same time, the houses are unique because residents were free to choose from the variety of architectural styles popular during the early 20th century, including Tudor Revival, Georgian Revival, and Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie style. Dr. R. W. Baird's Classical Revival residence at 5303 Swiss Avenue was the first one erected here in 1905. By 1920, about 200 elegant homes had been built in the Munger Place addition. Residents included prominent lawyers, bankers, merchants, industrialists, and doctors. In recent years, the Swiss Avenue area declined, and some of the old homes were demolished or divided into apartments. Efforts of the Historic Preservation League and interested citizens to save the neighborhood resulted in the city of Dallas designating it as the city's first historic district in 1973.