Easton Place: A Secret Enclave of 1970s Shed-Style Homes in a Wooded Oasis

There is no place in Dallas like Easton Place. If you don’t know where it is, that’s by design.

This East Dallas gem is easy to miss because it’s in a rather small, heavily-wooded neighborhood on a cul-de-sac off Easton Road, so it’s not going to be found easily by people driving by. David Bush Real Estate agent Stephan Schrenkeisen had 915 Easton Place for sale for a hot minute this week, which sent me down the research rabbit hole.

Resident Jan Shaffer has lived here for some time and wrote a wonderful history of Easton Place that Schrenkeisen forwarded to me. Henry Dorsey, Jr. is the first owner that she found information about from the 1920s.

Henry Jr.’s father died suddenly, and at age 27, he took over the Dorsey Company, a thriving family business dedicated to office furniture, office supplies, and printing. Henry was involved in many organizations and owned several cabins in Estes Park, Colorado, where he’d spent many summers. So, it’s not surprising he would have been on the lookout for a similar woodsy camp area in Dallas.

Dorsey found it near White Rock Lake, purchasing about 500 acres from a Mr. Favor in the 1920s.

We’re not sure if there was an existing building on the property or if he had one built, but it became known as Dorsey’s lodge — the White Rock summer home of Henry Dorsey, and later, the Quiver Inn.

He regularly hosted retreats for the Jaycees and the Junior Chamber of Commerce. He also hosted the White Rock YMCA swim meet at his pool in 1958.  

Dorsey got into development and turned some of his acreage into the Lake Gardens neighborhood. In a 1955 map of the area, you can see the undeveloped area that would become Easton Place.

When Dorsey died in 1963, he had no heirs, and the Franklins purchased 10 acres of the original Dorsey property, owning it from approximately 1965 to 1970. The Franklins sold to United Metro Development, and that was the end of an era but the beginning of Easton Place.

United Metro Development was a total concept organization. They offered everything from financing to construction and marketing, and they were pretty excited about this location.  

Easton Place, for a select few…tucked peacefully atop a hill in a densely wooded area, Easton Place is a highly restricted cluster-arranged development.

A private refuge only five minutes from White Rock Lake, Easton Place is set amid towering trees on a quiet, winding street. Each artistically surveyed lot confirms the patience and abiding respect for nature that guide Easton Place’s development.

Because of growing ecological awareness in the Dallas area, Easton Place is what people imagine when they think of building to complement nature — lushly wooded tracts with thick growth unscarred by impatient development.

Apparently, there were restrictions put on the sale of the land to developers; chief among them was that trees were not to be cut down. Homes had to be built around the natural environment.

Before you knew it, a very avant-garde modern community was growing among and literally around the trees. It’s not unusual to find a home here with a tree growing through it! Remember, architecture at this time was influenced by the environmental movement in the 1960s.

We may think sustainability is a new concept, but it was in full swing in the ’70s, and cutting-edge architects were building to embrace back-to-nature concepts. This, coupled with the influences of California Contemporary, particularly Shed Style, can be seen to have taken hold in Easton Place.

In 1976, Ebby Halliday was named as the exclusive agent to sell the neighborhood. By early 1984, Michael Jones & Co., a builder and designer who normally did contract custom homes, offered homes to the public for the first time here. He was as effusive as United Metro in interviews with the Dallas Morning News.  

“A natural site like Easton Place is too unique, too rare a find in Dallas to build your more conventional type houses. Imaginative design is a must.

Every home is designed for its particular site, taking into consideration tree location, the slope of the terrain, orientation, views, etc, and the particular needs of or lifestyle of the owner.

Nothing has changed in Easton Place, which is extremely refreshing in our current world of demolition and “big white box” buildings. This neighborhood is an example of what has always worked and continues to work. That’s exemplified in Schrenkeisen’s current listing of the Michael Jones & Co. model home at 915 Easton Place. 

The original advertisement read:

The model home at 915 Easton has an Italian-tiled foyer and gallery. The living area is dominated by a masonry fireplace that rises to meet the sloping 22-foot  ceiling. Natural light floods the area through 10-foot windows along two perimeter walls. The game room features a curved grasscloth-covered accent wall with sliding glass doors opening onto a private redwood deck and courtyard. 

I was not surprised when Schrenkeisen texted me yesterday: “We had an open house Sunday with 30-40 people through, received three offers the next day, and it went contingent today.”  

It just goes to show that Easton Place is always going to be one of the coolest neighborhoods in Dallas — if you can find it.