Live in Munger Place

Robert S. Munger, a cotton gin manufacturer, bought 300 acres east of downtown in 1905 and sold Munger Place, billed as the first deed-restricted neighborhood in Texas, with rules on every lot: a house of two full stories, costing at least $2,000, set 25 feet back and never facing a side street. The houses that went up, mostly two-story Prairie four squares with broad porches and low hipped roofs, are what the City calls the largest intact collection of Prairie-influenced structures in North Texas; Preservation Dallas claims the largest collection of Prairie four squares in the United States, and neither says how it counted. This guide covers the Munger Place Historic District as the City draws it: 84.6 acres of Junius, Worth, Victor and Tremont streets and Reiger Avenue between Fitzhugh and Henderson avenues, with the Swiss Avenue district across Gaston Avenue to the northwest.

The houses came back one at a time. In the Depression many owners split their houses into apartments and took in boarders, the post-war housing shortage sped the conversions, and by the 1960s, in Wikipedia's account, houses were coming down. In 1976 the Historic Preservation League helped set up the Munger Place revolving fund; between then and 1979, 27 houses were bought and resold with restoration covenants, and Preservation Dallas puts the private reinvestment at about $5 million. The City zoned the area as PD 97 in April 1978 and laid its historic overlay on 20 August 1980. The City's open data dates the district to 1981 and its own page to 1988, the year of the ordinance that governs it now.

The rules favor the single-family house. In Tract A, most of the district, a duplex or apartment use may not go into a building built for one family, and an existing one loses its right to continue once it stops or the building stands empty for six months; no building may add a unit. A new main building must have two stories, stand no taller than 36 feet and no wider than 42, cover no more than 35% of its lot and keep a 25-foot front yard. Facades are brick, wood siding or stucco; a front porch must be fully covered, 8 to 10 feet deep and never enclosed; and each house needs a roll step lined up with its front door. Staff decide routine repairs and paint in the approved range within 10 days, other work goes to the Landmark Commission, and each day of a violation can cost up to $2,000.

Most homes here are rented. The appraisal roll lists 194 single-family houses on a median lot of 8,376 square feet, and also 38 apartment properties and 9 duplexes. The 2020 census counted 1,248 people on 24 blocks, against 1,257 in 2010; on the 13 populated blocks at least 90% inside the line, owners lived in 137 of 359 occupied homes. No price index follows the district. Zillow's figure for ZIP code 75214, which holds 181 of the houses, was $841,168 in August 2026, up 4.1% on the year; 75246, with the other 13, was $381,857; the citywide MLS median single-family sale was $469,900, down 6.0%. On the 2025 rates a homestead at the 75214 figure owes the five taxing units about $14,429 a year, and about $18,730 without the exemption; the arithmetic is on the Dallas page.

The flood map is the City's own. Its floodplain layer shows no A or AE zone here, but it marks 57% of the district as a "1 PCT stormwater hazard area" and 27% as "Peak's Branch PFP", zones its metadata does not define; 99 of the 194 houses sit in the first at the middle of the lot. The Mill Creek drainage tunnel voters approved in 2012 serves Peaks Branch, but the City's FAQ says it will not appreciably reduce flooding upstream of it, and this guide could not find which side the district is on. Day to day, DART's Route 249 runs on Columbia Avenue every 30 minutes at peak, the Green Line stops at Fair Park about 1.5 km south, and Baylor University Medical Center is about 1.2 km southwest.