“Dallas Skyline: Late Afternoon From Stemmons Freeway” by Ed Bearden — 1959
by Paula Bosse
Skyline and power plant… (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
I think the 1950s Dallas skyline is my favorite Dallas skyline. This lithograph by Dallas artist Ed Bearden shows all the usual superstars — the Southland Life Building, the Medical Arts Building, the Republic Bank Building, the Mercantile, the Magnolia — but it also shows a building that doesn’t often find its way into artistic renderings of the city’s skyline: the Dallas Power & Light plant (which was demolished several years ago and is now the site of the American Airlines Center). It looks really great here, with its familiar twin steamstacks and its oasis-like “spray pond” shimmering in the foreground. In fact, the presence of the DP&L plant is my favorite element of this artwork. The beauty of that workhorse industrial plant gives those fancy skyscrapers a run for their money!
This same view from the Stemmons of today looks like — brace yourself — this.
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Sources & Notes
Lithograph by Ed Bearden; image from an auction listing on the Live Auctioneers site, here. (Thanks, “Not Bob,” for alerting me to this great artwork!)
See another Bearden skyline seen from a similar vantage point, here.
More on the cool-looking DP&L plant and its twin smokestacks can be found in these Flashback Dallas posts:
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Copyright © 2017 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved
Flashback : Dallas 
Do you have any info on the DP&L building downtown? My daughter has lived there off and on for nunerous years. It has a disturbing aura, wondered if there were any tragic stories related to it
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I don’t really know anything about it. I should look into it!
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That’s the skyline I remember growing up in Dallas. Along with the Neuoff plant and P.C. Cobb stadium just down the road.
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[…] The more I see of Ed Bearden’s work, the more I like it. See his Dallas skyline from 1958 here; see his Dallas skyline from 1959 here. […]
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[…] Fantastic lithograph by Dallas artist Ed Bearden — this view from Stemmons looks a lot different now. More info in the post “‘Dallas Skyline: Late Afternoon From Stemmons Freeway’ by Ed Bearden — 1959.… […]
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The skyline of Dallas really takes in four legal designations:
1) Downtown
2) Turtle Creek
3) The Stemmons Corridor
4) Uptown Dallas
These legal designations can be confusing to outsiders visiting the city.
In the end, there is just one skyline. It pours out of downtown unabated mainly because of the building of the levees for flood control which freed up huge amounts of land for development.
Ms. HUNT was the primary reason for the existence of Uptown as she saw downtown as the central business for office space and Turtle Creek as the central business for high rise living. So, she built her Crescent complex right in the middle of those two. The Harwood District is like a slight step down in class. Hillwood put a monumental effort into developing the Victory Place area and South did the impossible in developing “CityPlace.”
While the Central Dallas area is divided up into many legal designations, it’s skyline isn’t.
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