Leonard Volk will be discussing his family’s exceptional history starting with his family coming to Dallas in 1887, his father’s legendary stores – Volk Brothers, which began in 1890; Volk Estates, which is the subdivision built by his grandfather and now is the location of some of the most expensive real estate in Dallas; his memories of growing up in Dallas and how it has changed; his illustrious career in architecture and his community service career where he made a difference in the Dallas community. Plus, view many of his wonderful photographs from Dallas past and present.
Volk Department Store in Highland Park Village
Some interesting facts and highlights of the talk will include;
George Dahl, the outstanding Dallas architect, designed Volk’s main six-story building at 1806. It was built when air-conditioning was new. This was said to be the first department store in the nation that was fully air-conditioned.
Volk’s was the first downtown retailer to open a suburban store, with a branch in Highland Park Village in 1935. The Highland Park store became a national record-setter for sales per square foot of store space, and was enlarged twice in the ‘30s. The second suburban store at Live Oak and Skillman was built in 1949 before the next downtown retailer, Neiman Marcus, built a store at Preston Center in 1950.
Volk stores often had smile-maker features and events. For example, the Live Oak store had a glazed monkey cage, as did Wynnewood. In the main store there was a fluoroscope, a popular magnet that attracted children to see bones in their feet all in shades of green. At the main entrance to Live Oak there was a pond with goldfish and water lilies.
Harold Volk organized a collaborative group of fifty outstanding shoe stores around the country that he named Shoes Associated. One of them was Nordstrom in Seattle. He persuaded the Nordstrom brothers to expand their shoe business by adding apparel, as had Volk’s in 1930. The Nordstroms did so, and were so successful they began expanding their business nationally.
In about 1926 or ’27 Leonard’s grandfather bought vacant land in University Park, and put Harold Volk in charge of the subdivision called Brookside, now better known as Volk Estates, bounded on the north by Lovers Lane, the east and south by Turtle Creek, and west by the creek beyond Vassar Drive. Leonard’s grandfather built the first house in Brookside on Turtle Creek Boulevard, and his father built the second, on Golf Drive, later renamed Baltimore Drive.
Harold Volk, Leonard Volk
Items from the Dallas Historical Society’s Volk Collection will be on display.
Volk will be selling and signing his book, Everyday, a collection of his photographs, after the talk.
Hall of State in Fair Park
April 16, 2019
6:30 PM.
Volk is a third-generation Dallasite. He attended Texas Country Day School in Dallas (now St. Mark’s), graduated from Andover in 1945, and from Yale in 1949. He traveled in Europe for 14 months in 1949-50. From 1952 to 1955 Volk served in the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, stationed in Germany for two years. Returning to the U.S., he studied Architecture at MIT, and received his degree in 1959. He practiced architecture in Dallas from 1959 to 1989, much of the time as a principal of Selzer Associates, Architects. His design projects included low and high-rise apartments, attached houses, medical clinics and offices, office buildings, subdivision plans, a hangar and industrial building for Texas Instruments, commercial remodeling at Highland Park Village in Dallas and Ridglea Village in Fort Worth, staff housing at McDonald Observatory for the University of Texas, and public-housing modernization in West Dallas. He pursued a volunteer career in Dallas from 1959 to 1995, working on such activities as Goals for Dallas, organizing a Community Design Center for neighborhood improvement, and leading the Dallas AIA’s Affordable Housing Committee.
About Dallas Historical Society
The Dallas Historical Society collects, preserves, and exhibits the unique heritage of Dallas and Texas to educate and inspire future generations. Founded in 1922, it is the oldest historical organization in Dallas County. Today the Society is the steward of the Hall of State, a historical Texas Landmark built in 1936 for the Texas Centennial, located in Fair Park, as well as a collection of artifacts and archives from both Dallas and Texas in excess of 3 million pieces. This vast collection serves as the backdrop for year-round temporary exhibits and an archival research center in addition to public educational programs. For more information visit www.dallashistory.org