State Thomas: The Uptown Dallas Almost Hides

If your picture of Uptown Dallas is glass towers, apartments, restaurants, and McKinney Avenue, walk a few blocks east.

State Thomas complicates the picture.

Here, historic houses sit along tree-lined streets. Townhomes and newer residential buildings fill in around them. Griggs Park opens up unexpectedly between the buildings, with the Downtown skyline rising beyond it.

It feels like Uptown, but also like something that came before Uptown.

Because it did.

Before There Was “Uptown”

State Thomas is one of Dallas's oldest residential areas.

The City of Dallas describes it as the largest remaining collection of intact Victorian residential structures in the city, with one- and two-story homes representing Italianate, Queen Anne, and vernacular styles. The area became a Dallas Landmark District in 1986.

Its history is also intertwined with the Freedman's Town community that developed in this part of Dallas after the Civil War.

That history is easy to miss today. Modern Uptown has grown around it so completely that someone could live nearby without realizing how different this part of the city once looked.

Griggs Park helps preserve some of that memory. The eight-acre park is named for Reverend Allen R. Griggs, who was born enslaved in Georgia, came to Texas as a child, and became a prominent educator and Baptist minister after emancipation.

Then Dallas Rediscovered the Urban Neighborhood

The modern Uptown story began taking shape in the late 1980s.

In 1988, Dallas established the State-Thomas Tax Increment Financing district, the city's first TIF district. Infrastructure improvements followed, along with residential development and renewed private investment. Uptown Dallas credits early projects such as The Meridian and The Worthington with demonstrating demand for a more urban residential lifestyle.

The timing matters.

State Thomas wasn't simply preserved while Uptown happened somewhere else. It became part of the story of how Uptown happened.

Historic structures, new townhomes, apartments, restaurants, offices, parks, and public investment gradually created the layered neighborhood you see today.

A Different Version of Uptown Life

State Thomas also proves why talking about “living in Uptown” as though it were one experience can be misleading.

Here, the scale comes down.

You can find front doors facing sidewalks instead of elevator lobbies. Residential streets feel quieter than the McKinney Avenue corridor. Griggs Park gives the neighborhood a genuine green space, and historic houses interrupt the newer streetscape in ways that make you notice what was here before.

Yet you are still in the middle of Uptown.

McKinney Avenue, the M-Line trolley, restaurants, offices, Downtown, and the Katy Trail remain close. That's a fairly unusual combination in Dallas: an urban neighborhood where pieces of the city's nineteenth-century residential fabric remain embedded within the modern city.

Living in Uptown Dallas: The City Outside Your Front Door

Buying Here Requires Looking Block by Block

State Thomas is also a good example of why an Uptown home search needs more nuance than simply deciding how many bedrooms you want.

A historic house is not a townhome. A townhome is not a condominium. A quieter interior street doesn't live exactly like a property closer to the neighborhood's busier corridors.

The architecture, association structure, parking, outdoor space, building age, maintenance responsibilities, and immediate surroundings can change quickly.

Buying in Uptown Dallas: Condo, Townhome, or High-Rise?

That's not a drawback. It's one of the reasons State Thomas is interesting.

Uptown is usually described as one of Dallas's newer urban neighborhoods.

State Thomas is the reminder that parts of it are anything but.