Meet Kay Moore of Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street in Garland

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kay Moore.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Kay. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
When my husband Louis and I moved back to Garland in 2000 to take care of my aging mother, after career pursuits had led us to other areas of the country, we found my old growing-up neighborhood (11th Street near downtown Garland) in great decay. After my mother passed away and we no longer needed to be nearby to care for her, our adult children were frightened for us to remain on my growing-up street and begged us to move to newer, better-respected parts of town where the crime rate and other threats to safety were less. We were about to follow that recommendation, but the tug of this special place would not allow us to turn our backs on it. Instead of fleeing, we stayed and banned with neighbors, the police, the schools, and the city to rehabilitate and restore. Today the neighborhood (called the Travis College Hill Addition) is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the subject of a five-time award-winning documentary called “Saving Magic 11th Street.”

Part of that “Saving” process, interestingly enough, involved my husband and I acquiring Garland’s Historic Pace House, a turn-of-the-last-century Queen Anne-inspired Victorian farmhouse that the City of Garland owned but was considering demolishing because the city needed its site for transit-oriented housing. My husband and I put together a massive, complex, but successful plan to acquire it and move it to a vacant lot on our street; the vacant lot was a former side street that itself had been the site of a crime, litter, and loitering. In saving the house, a crucial problem area in our neighborhood also was turned around for the good.

In pulling together vast amounts of historical data to submit the application for the National Register nomination (as well as for a Texas Historical Marker), I uncovered all kinds of human-interest stories about early Garland and its leaders, as well as people that lived on the street, starting back in 1913 when the street was platted. It seemed a waste not to share all this with the public in some way. I am a career journalist, having written for the Houston Chronicle, United Press International wire service, and the Dallas Morning News, including being the author of several books, so pulling together facts in a readable way was natural for me.

I wrote an original play called “Becoming Garland Avenue” (the original name of 11th Street was Garland Avenue and remained so for about 20 years until the streets were renumbered and Garland Avenue was assigned to another thoroughfare). Inspired by the currently popular musical “The Greatest Showman” and the story of how those songwriters wrote their entire musical score in one weekend, I accomplished the same goal—applied myself over the scope of one weekend and pulled together eight original songs (and script) that help tell the story of the town in 1913.

The play will be shown on April 13 (Saturday) at 2 p.m. at downtown Garland’s Plaza Theatre, which interestingly enough is built over the site of the store that was the land office depicted in the drama. Five descendants of Garland families are characters in the play, portraying early day ancestors. The play is being funded in part by the Garland Cultural Arts Commission through a grant to our nonprofit, Friends of Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street.

The street that some urged us to turn our backs on and flee to the suburbs has risen to national attention, with people visiting the historic markers that are stationed in a prominent location. We often see people get out of their cars and take photos of some of the vintage homes and the markers that have been obtained. An aging area that was once termed a “slum” by one former councilmember is now one of Garland’s jewels. My husband and I are very glad we did not flee to newer quarters and stayed behind to make my old growing-up neighborhood great again.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It was indeed a difficult endeavor—convincing those in authority that the neighborhood was worth saving, pulling together coalitions of like-minded people, and of course, there was a financial price tag. Houses do not get moved and refurbished and brought up to speed without huge investments. Then there was a major effort in acquiring the information to get the neighborhood listed on the National Register. This required numerous trips (by DART train) to the county records building in downtown Dallas, to conduct hand-to-hand title research to find the names of deed-holders on all the properties in our two-block area back to 1913. We fought against difficult odds since we are a rare residential enclave in the middle of schools, churches, and a commercial area. Naturally, some of these neighboring bodies would have preferred to acquire our addition, tear down houses, and utilize the land for their own interests. It was difficult at times to convince people that this was an honored, esteemed residential area—with houses that owners took pride in, much like other individuals would feel about their own homes in newer parts of the city.

Please tell us about Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street.
In telling about our business, I’m referring to our nonprofit, “Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street”, which has undergirded the restoration effort and which now is producing the musical drama, “Becoming Garland Avenue.” Our goal is to preserve, promote, revitalize, and increase awareness of the residential and business potential and opportunities on 11th Street in the downtown area of the city of Garland. Sometimes in cities, neighborhoods expect the municipal government to do everything for them. In our situation, much of what we have accomplished has been grass-roots and free-enterprise. In this instance, we are proud of the fact that we as a neighborhood have banded together to put on a community theater presentation that is from the bottom up—we didn’t wait for a governmental body to initiate but put our noses to the grindstone and did this ourselves. Our drama represents a sort of new take on historic preservation—we are raising awareness (while entertaining) of what has gone before and educating people about what motivated this city generations ago, with the hope of taking that same initiative that inspired those ancestors and employing it in the future.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
We would have started earlier and not have been as cautious, believing that some governmental body or agency would intervene and not realizing that we were the solution.

Pricing:

• Tickets for our performance are $10 for students and $18 for people buying tickets at the door. The ticket sales are at www.garlandartsboxoffice.com or in person at the Granville Arts Center box office in downtown Garland.

Contact Info:

• Phone: 972-276-8867
• Email: kaymoore2000@yahoo.com
• Facebook: “Becoming Garland Avenue” musical drama Facebook page, “Magic 11th Street” Facebook page
• Twitter: @magic11thstreet

Image Credit:
Moores and Pace House moving day photo by Jim Bird

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