By Veletta Forsythe Lill
Former Dallas City Council Member, Preservationist
In 1936, when the Hall of State opened, it was the centerpiece of the Texas Centennial. It remains the most famous example of Art Deco architecture in Texas in the largest collection of the style at Dallas’ Historic Fair Park.
Celebrating four centuries of Texas history, it was built primarily of native materials — from the limestone facade to the sweet gum wood-paneled walls.
The building budget of $1.2 million included $200k for the artwork — 17 percent of the budget. Thus, almost every space in the building includes art, from the gleaming, ornamented door grilles to the Great Hall’s giant murals to the floor mosaics depicting Texas fauna. Artists, both local and national, were hired to create works that were symbolic of Texas over the centuries.
Internationally known artists such as Eugene Savage created the giant murals in the Great Hall. Local women artists such as Allie Tennant created the iconic gold leaf, Tejas Warrior, in the entry portico. Dorothy Austin, a Hockaday graduate, was 25 years old when she designed the bronze front door grilles and the carved wooden cowboy in the West Texas Room.
A young photographer named Polly Smith was commissioned in 1935 by officials of the Texas Centennial to travel around the state and create a series of photographs capturing the people and places that made Texas unique. While most of those photographs were used in marketing and promotional materials, a select group of them were printed using a unique orotone process and have been embedded in the walls of the North and East Texas Rooms ever since. They are believed to be the only orotones of this scale in the United States.
While municipal bond work had funded work at the Hall of State over the years, most of that was allocated to behind-the-scenes infrastructure. At the end of 2020, a bond-funded $14.4 million interior and exterior renovation were completed. The exterior facade was cleaned, all the doors and windows were restored, an ADA ramp was added, and much of the interior first floor was repaired and painted. On November 6, 2020, a ribbon-cutting ceremony heralded a new day for one of Texas’s most iconic buildings.
From Celebration to Evacuation
As the final punch list and inspections were completed, the winter storm swept through the building and Fair Park. The area suffered multiple blackouts.
At approximately 4 a.m. on February 17, the Dallas Historical Society Facilities Manager received a call that there was a water flow sensor issue in the Hall of State fire sprinkler system. The manager immediately went to the site and discovered water flowing from the front doors.
There was no electricity. Upon entering a dark building, he discovered water spraying from the ceiling and pooling on the floor. The fire department arrived and shut off the pressurized sprinkler system, a system that had been inspected less than two weeks prior, was roughly 11 years old and was in a heated space. Draining those lines is not advised and should be supervised by the fire department. Shortly after the sprinkler system was turned off, the electricity was restored, placing everyone in peril with the electrical panels filled with water.
Oncor was contacted to shut down all power to the building.
By 10 a.m., work crews arrived to begin pumping water out of the building, heating and dehumidifying the spaces.
As water and humidity are enemies of documents, addressing those elements was the highest priority. A document restoration company arrived to remove and freeze any documents or maps in the historical collection directly impacted by water.
Volunteers from TX-CERA (Texas Collections Emergency Resource Alliance) arrived shortly after. This group of volunteers is the equivalent of the Red Cross for art and collections. They dispatched a team of conservators and curators. These volunteers moved papers and objects with mild water or humidity impact to a dry, dehumidified area for assessment and triage. As the Great Hall was NOT impacted by the water intrusion, that became the triage area.
The Dallas Historical Society holds over 3 million items in its collection, and this event impacted less than 1 percent of the collection. Items are stored at two sites — the Hall of State and a small, acclimatized warehouse in the Oak Cliff area. Most documents are stored in sealed cabinets at the Hall of State, and they are largely waterproof but still needed to be assessed. Many of the items in the 3-D collection are stored in the off-site collection and were not impacted at all.
Art conservators from TX-CERA came to inspect the murals in the regional rooms (the Great Hall was not impacted), the rare Polly Smith orotones, and historic cabinets. The City of Dallas owns all artwork attached to the walls, and the Office of Arts & Culture has oversight. At this time, all murals, including the Tom Lea, Olin Herman Travis, and Arthur Starr Niendorff, have been assessed for damage and restoration estimates turned into the city.
The rare orotones of Polly Smith are the most impacted as water rained down on them and in the walls behind them. They are the most in peril of the artwork.
Damage repair for the artwork has been assessed at $411k of the total $3.2 million estimate for repairs.
The collection restoration cost is still being assessed and will not be available for weeks because of the unique nature of each item and the individualized treatment required. Due to the quick response of so many and various storage methods used, DHS feels that all items can be saved.
While it has been an exhausting few weeks for many, there are green shoots of hope for the collection and the artwork. The question now becomes how long will the city and/or FEMA take to organize to make repairs to the building. There is a sad irony that a system designed to protect from fire ended up subjecting the building to flood.
Readers can donate by going to dallashistory.org and clicking on the banner ‘Storm Damage Relief Fund.’
A change agent in Dallas for more than three decades, the former member of the Dallas City Council (1997-2005), Executive Director of the Dallas Arts District (2008-2012), and long time community advocate has played multiple roles in the development of the cultural and physical city. Known for her work in the arts and historic preservation, she has served on numerous private, non-profit boards from the Dallas Museum of Art to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has received awards at a local, state, and national level. She is currently the chair of the Dallas Historical Society board of trustees and founding board member of Fair Park First, the non-profit charged with revitalizing Fair Park.
