Live in M Streets

In 1923 Frank and Fletcher McNeny platted 98 acres of the Bennett farm as Greenland Hills, between the railroad that later became the route of Central Expressway and the Interurban line on Matilda Street, and builders such as C.L. Sowell filled it with brick, stone and stucco veneer houses, Tudor above all. The appraisal district dates 528 of today's 858 houses to the 1920s and 171 to the 1930s. Wikipedia says the name M Streets comes from McCommas and Monticello and the many smaller streets that start with M; Ridgedale, Vanderbilt and Homer do not, and no source this guide found says how the streets got their M names. This guide covers the City's M Streets Conservation District, from Central Expressway to Greenville Avenue and from the alley north of McCommas Boulevard to the alley south of Vanderbilt Avenue: about 176 acres by the ordinance and 214 as the zoning layer draws it, with 2,077 residents at the 2020 census against 1,903 in 2010. Wikipedia's figure of about 6,000 is not the census count for these blocks.

A new house here has to be High Tudor. More than 75% of owners petitioned for the district, and the City's plan named what they wanted stopped: demolitions, oversized new construction and excessively large rear additions. The Council passed Ordinance 25116 on 13 November 2002, and the regulations it now carries, rewritten in 2013, are specific. Only single-family houses, and no more units on a lot. A new house must have a side-gabled roof pitched between 45 and 70 degrees, no hipped roof, brick or stone walls, a dominant front gable and at least four of eight listed features, from an arched doorway to a massive front chimney. Nothing may rise above the line of sight from a six-foot person standing in the middle of the street to the ridge of the side gable, or above 30 feet, and the City's plan applies that limit to additions as well as new houses; side gables must keep at least 30% of their back slope. Lots may cover 45%, garages sit in the rear 30% of the lot, and each house gets one straight driveway on its east side. Standing-seam metal, rolled and tar-and-gravel roofing are barred on the front, the wrap-around and any garage the street can see.

An old High Tudor house is hard to take down. Demolition is allowed only if bringing the house up to code with similar materials would cost more than 80% of its value on the appraisal roll; a non-Tudor house may be remodeled in its own style or in High Tudor. The roll shows how much has been rebuilt anyway: 97 of the 858 houses date from 2000 or later, with a median of 3,394 square feet of living space against 1,921 for those built before 1950. The lots are even, the middle half between 7,136 and 7,650 square feet, and the ordinance caps a lot's width at 60 feet. Two more conservation districts adjoin it: M Streets East, across Greenville Avenue since 2004, and Vickery Place, to the south since 2006.

Owners hold four in five of the occupied homes. In 2020 owners lived in 678 of the 860 and 21% of residents were under 18. No price index follows the district's line. Zillow's single-family figure for ZIP code 75206, which holds the whole district and about twelve times its ground, was $756,781 in August 2026, up 3.6% on the year; the citywide MLS median single-family sale was $469,900, down 6.0%. The census survey's owners, in the block group that holds more than half the district's homes, put the median at $915,600, give or take $65,692, and the two sources do not agree. On the 2025 rates a homestead at Zillow's figure owes the five taxing units about $12,842 a year and the same house without the exemption about $16,851; the arithmetic is on the Dallas page. No public improvement district reaches the district.

The flood map touches a third of the houses. The City's floodplain layer puts about 15% of the district in zones it calls 1% stormwater hazard areas, touching 289 houses, the most on Monticello, Ridgedale and Merrimac, and 11% in a Mill Creek zone the layer does not define; it shows no AE zone. SMU/Mockingbird Station is about 820 meters north of the district's edge, Route 205 runs on the Central Expressway frontage roads and Route 3 on Matilda Street, a block east of Greenville. For the St. Patrick's Day Block Party on 14 March 2026, the City limited the M streets to residents' traffic from 7 a.m. to 8:15 p.m.