The story of 1900 Elm

Before it was 129 homes, 1900 Elm was where Dallas went shopping.

A broad-front store on Elm Street

The Titche-Goettinger Company opened its new store at the corner of Elm and St. Paul in 1929. It was one of Dallas' original broad-front department stores, the kind built to fill a whole block face with display windows and bring shoppers in off the street. Elm Street was the city's retail spine, and a store of this size announced that the company intended to stay.

The building is credited to architect George Dahl [VERIFY: architect George Dahl], whose design has been described as a Florentine palazzo with Texas motifs and Art Deco flourishes. Look up from the sidewalk and you can read that mix in the limestone: tall openings at the base, a regular run of windows above, and a cornice line that gives the block its proportion. Inside, the sales floors were carried on columns fifteen feet tall, finished with ornate crown molding that is still in place today.

From sales floors to lofts

Department stores need deep floors and tall ceilings. Lofts need exactly the same things, which is why the conversion worked so well. The building was converted to 129 loft residences [VERIFY: conversion year and developer], from about 494 to 2,685 square feet and no two exactly alike. Residences on the outside walls kept the original casement windows and their views of the city; the deep floors became the long, open rooms the building is known for.

The ground floor still faces the street the way it was designed to, now with the restaurant Partenope at the corner, and a two-level garage sits below the building. [VERIFY: National Register or Dallas Landmark status; later uses of the building between the store's closing and the conversion]

What that means when you live here

It means the column in your living room is a 1929 column. It means a window you can open on a spring evening, a lobby floored in terrazzo, and a building that has been part of downtown Dallas for nearly a century.

Come see it in person. Schedule a tour or browse the lofts available now.