The Big D gets an A+

If you’ve watched TV in the last 20 years or checked the NFL rankings lately, you probably think you know Dallas. Well, yes and no.

J.R. only lives in reruns, but in real-life Dallas, you can watch billionaire Mark Cuban cheer on his basketball team-and tangle with referees. As for the Cowboys, they’re still marching down the gridiron (and in and out of trouble), but they left Dallas for suburban Irving decades ago. And they’re about to move again, west to Arlington.

So, the clichés are a start, but Dallas is more than colorful executives and running backs. Now cocktail chatter is just as likely to include marquee architects, who are descending on the city with buildings and projects.

The latest gem: Renzo Piano’s Nasher Sculpture Garden. A few years ago, the Guggenheim and other museums tried to acquire real-estate mogul Raymond Nasher’s art collection. But his hometown won out and Dallas landed an urban sanctuary, with Rodins, Picassos, and Moores arrayed in the shadow of skyscrapers. This year, the buzz is “Walking to the Sky” by Jonathan Borofsky, a towering steel pipe with figures climbing its length toward heaven. It will remain in the garden until March 2006 and makes a quirky addition to the city’s skyline, suggesting there’s more to Dallas glitz than first meets the eye.

The downtown garden sits next door to the Meyerson Symphony Hall, a glowing crystal of a building designed by I.M. Pei. A few blocks away, plans are progressing to build a Norman Foster-designed opera hall and a Rem Koolhaas theater. Across town, bridges designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava are in the works.

Yes, you will hear a lot of name-dropping in Dallas. Decades ago, critics attributed it to insecurity: The city embraced culture and sophistication to prove it was world-class. There may still be a bit of that, but there’s a simpler explanation, too. Dallasites like nice things, and they love showing off.

The city’s character

For most of the world, Dallas is defined by one horrible moment on November 22, 1963. The assassination of John F. Kennedy marred the city’s psyche for decades. Dallas didn’t regain its footing until the early 1990s, when Oliver Stone re-created the famed motorcade through the Triple Underpass to film JFK. When the assassination became pop culture, the city let go of its collective guilt.

Dallas has always relied on grit and self-promotion. It prospered by luring railroads to the North Texas prairie and became a regional business center built around cotton trade. Years later, it boomed with the oil industry. J.R. notwithstanding, there are no oil wells in Dallas, but much of the state’s petroleum industry was financed by Dallas banks. And when newly rich tycoons craved big-city thrills, they went to Dallas and its luxurious department stores, like Neiman Marcus.

The city has always sought the next big thing, and in 1958, it hit pay dirt. Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby cobbled together a collection of transistors to create the microchip. A few years later, an ambitious IBM salesman named H. Ross Perot launched his own business, creating Electronic Data Systems and another Texas legend. More recently came Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, founders of Broadcast.com. They sold to Yahoo! at the height of the dot-com boom and have been flashing their money around ever since.

The last 20 years have seen a real estate bust and a telecom industry meltdown. As before, the city picked itself up and moved on. The latest addition: Hispanic and East Asian immigrants. Whole sections of town seem transported from northern Mexico, and it’s as easy to buy handmade tortillas as a loaf of bread. Smaller but growing are suburban Indian enclaves, where crowds line up for the latest Bollywood releases, and cricket games compete for space with soccer matches.

Dallas sells itself as a business city, and it is. Residents work long hours and jam highways day and night. Many visitors leave thinking that’s all there is. Here’s a secret: The city keeps its beauty for itself. Its leafy neighborhoods and sparkling parks were designed for residents, not outsiders. (Still, everyone’s free to drive by Highland Park’s mansions or jog around White Rock Lake.) Now, with the growing Arts District, a downtown housing boom and the maturing of its edgy nightclub district, the city’s quirks are easier to find.

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Larry Bleiberg is travel editor of The Dallas Morning News. Email Larry at editor@executivetravelmag.com.

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