Each year for the past 12, D’s sister publication, D Home, has crowned the 10 Most Beautiful Houses in Dallas. It’s a fun, admittedly subjective, and ultimately challenging assignment—to whittle down the list to just two handfuls of properties in a city teeming with feature-worthy homes.
Following the completion of last year’s list, we made the decision to take a break from beautiful and instead recognize the most charming houses within the city limits. We simply needed a change of pace and figured readers did, too. And while we never could have predicted what lie ahead, our choice now seems oddly prescient: Charming feels wholesome and reassuring in pandemic times when not much else does.
It felt good to be driving around looking at adorable homes in late March, as the world was falling into the grips of COVID-19. Frankly, it felt good to be out of the house doing anything. There are worse ways to spend a crisp, sunny spring day than getting lost in the winding, hilly streets of Lakewood, or cruising Kessler Park with the windows down, a safe social distance from anyone.
Every year, people ask how we find the houses we include. The answer, to people’s surprise, is the old-fashioned way: we get in our cars and drive. Putting this year’s list together was our hardest task to date, and I’m not just talking about the logistics of awkward stares from driveway happy hour attendees as we circled the block for the third time, or avoiding kids riding bikes in the midst of what should’ve been a school day.
Poring over our finalists was like choosing between children. Charming is emotional. There were heated disagreements. We finally settled on 10 honorees, though the list of also-rans is far longer. You can see our picks in the July issue of D, or it’s online today. Take a look at the finalists, and let us know what you think.
Then, hop in your car, crank the AC, put this map on your phone, and take a driving tour of our 10 Most Charming Houses in Dallas. It’ll show you a refreshing side of local real estate that’s as good for your soul as all that at-home bread-baking you mastered back in March, then just as quickly abandoned for store-bought sliced loaves when the novelty of sheltering in place wore off. The entire route will take you just over an hour to complete from the safe comfort of your car, though we’d encourage you to make a day of it and stop periodically to support your favorite local businesses (masks on please!) or stretch your legs in a public park.
It’s embedded below.
