A History of the Dells District
The Dells neighborhood is a small pocket of brick and stone cottages located southwest of the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and Westmoreland Road in Dallas, Texas. It was first developed as the Irwindell Addition in the late 1920s. A number of cottages were built dating from 1924 on what was once a turn-of-the-century dairy farm. These homes were typical of the era with steep gabled roof lines, brick archways and porches. Originally, rock archways marked the street entrances to the neighborhood. These, along with a row of houses, were lost with widening of Westmoreland Road in the 1950s.
Development slowed until after World War II, when a number of small, ranch style houses were developed on the remaining lots. These homes, with their exteriors of pale brick, limestone, or a combination of the two, blend well with the older cottages, keeping the same scale as their counterparts. The neighborhoods flourished in the late 1990s with the Oak Cliff real estate boom and the resurgence of a neighborhood association. In 2005 the neighborhood expanded to the Cockrell Hill border to include the two Westernmost blocks of homes. Nestled in a wooded area off a busy street, this neighborhood remains a charming enclave of cottages, well-established trees and quaint ambiance.