Original members of Moorland YMCA retrace their steps through history
DALLAS (CBSNewsTexas.com) – Dallas' Arts District remains a half-mile long pedestrian thoroughfare of the city's museum of art, a performing arts center, a symphony center, even a school for the performing arts.
And sitting on the east edge of the district, a building that holds 93 years of Dallas history remains.
"I was 16 when I came here," 84-year-old Helen Stratford recounted Tuesday afternoon, inside the original Moorland YMCA.
Stratford had joined 25 other Black senior citizens who were part of a special tour of the building originally built as a community gathering space for Dallas' segregated Black community known as "Short North Dallas" from the 1920's to the 1960's.
"The building contained the social, physical and spiritual outlets such as those now available to the Negro in Dallas. Equipped with a gymnasium, club rooms, swimming pool in modern dormitory, the building will be unique. It is designed as a monument to Christian manhood and good citizenship," according to a 1930 report written for the Dallas Morning News.
93-year-old Oweda Holt returned to the Moorland building for the first time in decades.
"It's education. It's history," she said.
The Dallas Black Dance Theatre purchased the Moorland building in 2008. DBDT Founder Ann Williams wanted to maintain a presence of Dallas' Black history from the community crafted in the early 20th century.
Today, the legacy of black life in the area includes Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts, St. Paul United Methodist Church, Griggs Park and Dallas Black Dance Theatre inside the Moorland structure.
DBDT Executive Director Zanetta Drew said the dance company's alignment with the Arts District is a point of pride, but maintaining the company's presence in a facility of community history was important.
"Building a better Dallas is also being able to educate about what is not just black history, but what is American history and Dallas history," Drew said.
By midday, the group of senior citizens were retracing the steps of the old Moorland floor by floor. They remembered the indoor pool, the gymnasium and the dormitory that serves as accommodations for black visitors to Dallas who were denied hotel stays. The building at 2700 Flora Street still stands.