Tucked into a quiet eastern corner of our neighborhood, abutting rolling hills overlooking Dixon Branch Creek, lies Highland Meadows, one of the most well-preserved pockets of mid-century modern architecture in Dallas.

Photography by Lauren Allen

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Comprising 1,390 homes and 17 subdivisions, the neighborhood sits shaded by towering pecan trees, and nature feels just a little bit closer. A closer connection to the outdoors is integral to this style, which bridges the gap between nature and a home’s interior through intentional placement of large, floor-to-ceiling windows.

Mid-century modern architecture, as the name suggests, was developed and popularized in the post-war years of the 20th century. The style is defined by clean lines, wood, indoor-outdoor living, flow between spaces and an emphasis on functionality.

A rolling sub development of meadows & hills

The name “Highland Meadows” is a recent term for the neighborhood, adopted by neighbors in 2006 when the neighborhood association formed. The name is a reference to the rolling meadows that John Preston Travis II, alongside Consulting Architects Viktor and Aladar Olgyay, developed into the Mediterranean Gardens and Sylvania Dells subdivisions in 1950.

Alongside Lakeland Hills and Meadowbrook Village, the four subdivisions represent the bulk of Highland Meadows’ mid-century homes.

“I know Bill Travis very well. He and his wife, Jane, and I know that when he was a teenager, his father identified this property and wanted to develop it,” says longtime Mediterranean Gardens resident Robyn Flatt. “He was a contractor and a developer, and I’m not sure what all, but anyway, they were very interested in the idea of living with nature and welcoming it into kind of your daily living.”

Flatt has lived in Mediterranean Gardens since 1975. She is the daughter of local arts legend Paul Baker, who founded the Dallas Theater Center and was the first director of Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Flatt is an artist herself, having worked for the Theater Center early in her career before founding the Dallas Children’s Theater in 1984 and leading the organization for close to four decades before retiring in 2022.

Flatt was initially hesitant to move to Highland Meadows as it meant a longer commute to the Theater Center. Her late husband, Richard, however, was an architect who fell in love with their eventual home at first sight when visiting the Levinson family, the previous owners the home.

“It’s very structural. I mean, he appreciated the mathematical relationships between the different spaces, and he recognized that also in their house,” she says. “And I think he recognized that in this whole neighborhood.”

When the Levinsons moved to California, Robyn and Richard bought the three-bedroom house for $44,000 in 1975.

As you enter Flatt’s home, rooms flow seamlessly from one to another. The kitchen, living room, dining room and a piano room sit divided by a partition wall that doesn’t quite reach the ceiling, creating a sense of unity and oneness while still maintaining the integrity of each space. Floor-to-ceiling windows complement the prevailing clerestories that flood the house with natural light.

“I love sitting right there and watching the leaves,” Flatt says. “It’s like a Japanese painting, the Japanese like to take a little narrow, little slice of something.”

The home is splashed with art and signs from wall to wall, with few spaces remaining unadorned. Play posters, pottery, statuettes and folk art abound. Paintings by a Japanese artist, given to Flatt’s husband by way of payment, decorate the walls of the home’s dining room, which also features an original theater seat from the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Dallas Theater Center.

Flatt raised two children in the home. Kristi Cardwell, her daughter, who also works in the fine arts, says growing up in the house impacted her relation to space and design.

“I didn’t have the exact understanding I have now, and certainly with the recent information we’ve gotten, I can better quantify what I feel in my heart and what just feels like welcoming spaces that I feel happy in,” Cardwell says. “But definitely, I mean growing up, walking out of my bedroom door and seeing all the way through the house and seeing the trees and seeing as the light changes and how it hits those trees out there, and the different angles that light comes in was very much a big pull for the house we chose and that we live in now.”

And where does she live now?

Right down the street.

She and her husband, Andy, live on Eden Roc Circle. Cardwell is seemingly one of a few residents who returned to the neighborhood as adults, and she says she feels very fortunate to be a lifelong Highland Meadows Resident.

“I feel very lucky. I think it was quite amazing that we were able to get the house and for our girls to be able to run around and have a lot of that connection with family being close and a different kind of space,” Cardwell says. “The design of each house is different. I just love our neighbors.”

Kicking out nature to invite it in again

When Jeff and Stacy Keller first saw what would become their Highland Meadows home in the early 2000s, they were shocked.

The previous owner had let the home fall into a serious state of disrepair. On top of hordes of batteries, light bulbs and other assorted items stacked ceiling-high from wall to wall, the home was infested with fleas and vermin.

“It was an absolutely deplorable condition, like really, really, really bad,” Jeff says. “No indoor plumbing, there was a hole in the roof, holes in the floor, everything. And the house was a disaster.”

Jeff and Stacy, despite the home’s condition, put a strong offer on the house that was accepted, with the previous owner choosing them for their interest in restoring the 2,645-square-foot three-bedroom home.

That was probably the easiest part of the process.

While renting a house off of Mockingbird Lane, Jeff worked tirelessly to make the home livable after work. He tore out the kitchen, replaced previously black-stained flooring with vibrant hardwood floors and built a sprawling backyard deck with views overlooking the Dixon Branch. The home’s existing drainage pipes had degraded considerably over the years, which presented him with one of the toughest challenges of the renovation process.

“I was gonna plow all that out, and I did. I remember laying that new pipe in there. It was about 112 degrees in August, and it was raining, and it was like, ‘Oh, this is so miserable.’ Putting that stuff down deep, I was six feet down, it was just humid and sticky and gross. I was like, ‘Oh, this is absolutely horrible, dangerous.’ Plumbing that pipe into the main surface drain and putting all that in there, it was just like, ‘Oh, God, that was the worst part.’”

But, after months of hard work, the mid-century aficionados finally had their dream home. Jeff managed to save the home’s original theater-style dimmers and touch lights.

Garages are rare in mid-century homes, with carports being the norm. The Kellers’ home, however, has a one-car garage — a lucky break as they own two classic Chevrolets, including one that matches the home’s baby blue and gray exterior.

Windows at the front of the Kellers’ home are limited to clestories, with floor-to-ceiling windows representing the majority of the backwards-facing wall space. It gives the family privacy from the street while still allowing nature to pour in from the back.

“I like how everything’s kind of closed and private in the front, you know. Nobody can really see in or see what we’ve got or what we’re doing, but it’s just all completely open in the back, so we don’t have windows or curtains or whatever,” Stacy says.

The back windows look out toward a heavily-wooded portion of the Dixon Branch. Beneath the deck, their backyard declines gently at first, then drastically toward the creek. Jeff is building a walkway to the bottom of the decline from his studio, which he added onto the patio within the last few years.

Bringing nature into the home will always be one of the most foundational aspects of mid-century architecture.

“We sit at the kitchen table, and we can watch nature and birds and squirrels and animals and just be completely entertained for a long time, especially in the snow,” he says. “We’ve seen so many things out there. We’ve seen little sparrow hawks or American kestrels catch a bird and eat it right there. On Christmas Eve, I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ It was horrific, and it was terrible, and it was wonderful. If that makes sense.”

Furniture, then the house

Mid-century modern furniture has become increasingly popular in recent years, with The Washington Post calling it “the style that won’t die.”

But Kevin Shepard beat the trend by a few years.

“I bought this stereo, and it was a mid-century modern piece, and that was my first real interaction with knowing what mid-century modern was,” Shepard says. “I knew I liked the style of it.”

From there, Shepard became an ardent fan of vintage mid-century furniture and eventually architecture.

He and his partner, Travis Williams, rushed home from family outings to put in an offer when their agent informed them that a Highland Meadows home was available. Shepard had continued to collect mid-century furniture in the meantime, so fortunately enough, there wasn’t much to be bought.

“We did it in reverse,” Williams says. “Most people buy a home and then furnish it. We sort of bought all the furnishings and then bought the house to go with it.”

Eclectic light fixtures, blown glass, vintage artifacts and coffee tables are scattered throughout the home. Most of Shepard’s remaining collection is kept in a storage unit, from which he occasionally resells.

“In our house, the majority of everything in there is truly vintage,” Shepard says. “I don’t like to buy new stuff. I don’t think the quality is there and the style. To me, some stuff is good reproduction, but a lot of it you can kind of tell, ‘Hey, that’s just a modern version of the mid-century.’”

With the home, Shepard and Williams have tried to “recreate a slice of Palm Springs here in Dallas.” To that end, they’ve planted palm trees in their backyard and commissioned a poolside mural that calls back to arid Southern California.

The community found within the neighborhood is one of the couple’s favorite parts of living in Highland Meadows, they say.

“It’s been interesting to see not only the neighborhood improve from people moving in and updating and improving homes, but also seeing the young people move in and seeing the vibrancy of the neighborhood, people walking, people getting to know one another. It’s kind of old-fashioned in that way, because the neighbors know each other.”

Preserving the Meadows

From May 6 to July 6, Mediterranean Gardens will be featured in an exhibition titled Preserving Tomorrow: Rediscovering Dallas’ Mediterranean Gardens Neighborhood at the Architecture and Design Exchange downtown. The exhibition will explore the original vision of J.P. Travis II and the original architects involved in Mediterranean Gardens through archival architectural models, detailed plans, photographs, sales brochures and news articles.

Regardless of its influence on other parts of Dallas, it appears Highland Meadows will continue to be a bastion of mid-century gems in our neighborhood. Teardowns have plagued the neighborhood considerably less than other parts of Lake Highlands, and new families restore and preserve the homes that make it unique.

Highland Meadows will remain one of the, if not the most, important cradles for an iconic architectural style in Dallas.