Live in Lakewood

Lakewood's original addition, Lakewood Country Club Estates, went up beside the club that Collett Munger and George Aldredge founded in 1912 at Abrams Road and Gaston Avenue, when no paved road reached it. From the mid-1920s Dines and Kraft built mostly Tudor houses there, and Clifford D. Hutsell built 50 homes between 1926 and 1947, known for his multicolored tile roofs and buff brick; building went on east into the Westlake Park, Monticello and Gaston Place additions into the mid-1940s. This guide covers the Lakewood Neighborhood Association's area as the association files it on the City's map: about 1,155 acres from Abrams Road to the lake and from Mockingbird Lane to Gaston Avenue, with 8,102 residents at the 2020 census. The City says it does not check those lines. The census survey dates about half the homes in the block groups that cover it to before 1960.

On 178 acres, a new house has to fit the old ones. The Council created the Lakewood Conservation District in July 1988 on the blocks along Lakewood Boulevard, Lakeshore Drive and the streets down to Gaston Avenue, and on 26 February 2025 it added a fourth tract of about 54 acres to the east, toward Lawther Drive. The district now holds 453 of the area's 2,626 single-family parcels, on a median lot of 10,915 square feet against 9,741 across the whole area. In Tract IV a new house must follow one of five styles: Tudor, Spanish Revival, French Eclectic, Colonial Revival or Neoclassical. It may be two stories plus an attic, 30 feet tall on a lot under 10,000 square feet and 35 on a larger one, with no garage on the front, and it may cover 40% of the lot where a house that stood in March 2025 keeps 45%. A house built before 1961 in one of those styles can come down only if repairs would cost more than 80% of its improvement value on the appraisal roll. The first three tracts keep the 1988 ordinance's standards, which this guide has not read; ask Planning and Development what they require on a given lot.

The sources count the pressure differently. The committee's filing counted 12 houses in its proposed area demolished for new construction since 2011, and the City's staff presentation 13. The proposal the Plan Commission heard in November 2024 covered about 114 acres; the ordinance the Council passed covers about 54, after an amendment took out the connecting blocks between Copperfield Lane and Wendover Road. Outside the district most of the area, 754 acres, is R-7.5(A) single-family zoning, which sets lots and yards but not a style. Across the whole area, three houses are City landmarks in their own right, among them the Clifford D. Hutsell House.

Owners live in most of the houses. In 2020 owners lived in 2,529 of the 2,930 occupied homes, 86%, and 2,436 residents, three in ten, were under 18. No price index follows the association's line. Zillow's figure for ZIP code 75214, which covers more than four times the area and had 35,664 residents in 2020, was $841,168 in August 2026, up 4.1% on the year; the citywide MLS median single-family sale was $469,900, down 6.0%. The census survey's block group medians, which owners estimate themselves, run from $922,200 to $1,447,300 with wide margins, and the two sources do not agree. On the 2025 rates a homestead at Zillow's figure owes the five taxing units about $14,429 a year and the same house without the exemption about $18,730; the arithmetic is on the Dallas page. No public improvement district reaches the area.

The lake is next door, and the flood map reaches into the streets. The City's floodplain map puts about 5% of the area in the 1% annual chance zone, and 186 single-family parcels touch it, the largest numbers on Lakeforest Court, Sperry Street, Williamson Road and Alexander Drive; McCommas Creek crosses the north. Day to day, Whole Foods on Abrams Road is inside the line, Tom Thumb is across the Mockingbird intersection, DART's Route 9 runs along Gaston Avenue every 15 minutes at peak and midday on weekdays, and SMU/Mockingbird Station, on the Red, Orange and Blue lines, is about 2 km west.