ABSTRACT
Dallas was founded in the mid-nineteenth century, being granted a town charter in 1856. In the 1870s it found itself at the intersection of Texas’s two major railroad routes and soon began to develop as the state’s major trading centre for its farmers and ranchers. In January 1964, the 63-year-old Erik Jonsson took over as Mayor of Dallas and he was determined to rebuild the reputation of the city he loved. The design of the plaza outside was placed in the very capable hands of landscape architect Dan Kiley, who had completed the landscape around Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum, in nearby Fort Worth. The angled facade feels overwhelming under the flat angled glazing of the offices and, with the exception of the entrance bay, the ground floor walls offer ten feet of blank concrete around almost all of the building.
