Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall, 2002 Page: 40
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Angus Wynne, Jr., about 1946.
The first houses in Dallas to be constructed with
concrete slab foundations,5 the homes boasted
ceiling insulation, weather stripping, central heat
and attic fans, and all-electric kitchens, and some
had wood-burning fireplaces with gas inserts.
Some 665 houses were under construction or
immediately planned in the development south
of Illinois Avenue, with purchase prices in the
first inventory of available houses west of Zang
Boulevard in the $10,000 range, and additional
homes east of Zang to be priced between $6,500
and $8,500.
The earliest public announcements of the
Wynnewood development appeared in the daily
newspapers, the Dallas Power & Light
Company's customer magazine, and other publications
in April 1946, at the height of immediate
post-war shortages of housing, building materials,
steel, automobiles, and other commodities.
The shortage of housing units, both rental and
for purchase, was critical. As late as December,President Harry Truman was describing the
housing crunch being experienced by war veterans
as "extremely urgent"6 as he lifted controls on
building starts for new, "non-luxury," housing
units while maintaining tight limits on new commercial
construction. Wartime industries were
still re-tooling for peacetime production, and the
housing shortage was being exacerbated by
extreme shortages of building materials as well.
The office of National Housing Expediter, headed
by former Louisville mayor Wilson Wyatt,
was scrambling to push legislation through
Congress that would encourage private investment
in large scale housing developments by
adopting a government guarantee to developers
of a 3-1/2 to 4 per cent return on investment, 95
per cent FHA loans, and other mechanisms to
assist moderate-income families and returning
veterans in meeting their housing needs.
Dallas Mayor Woodall Rodgers appointed a
panel to explore ways to speed up housing development
in Dallas as well. He asked the Dallas
Home Builders Association to survey builders
about materials shortages, saying, "It's not how
many homes we can start, but how many veterans
we can put under a roof that counts."7
The land that would become Wynnewood
had been assembled during the previous thirtyfive
years, mostly by banker Edward J. Gannon
and his family in a largely unrealized vision for
expansive development south of downtown
Dallas. The 820-acre tract was carved out of two
original Peters Colony land patents granted
before 1852 to the Wright and Robinson families,
who had emigrated from Tennessee and
Missouri. By the 1870s, the precinct was widely
settled and under cultivation by dozens of families
who were part of the community ofJimtown.
Located near the present intersection of
Hampton Road and Clarendon Drive was druggist
James Bumpas' general store, waystation and
feed store. The crossroads was dubbed Jimtown
in 1878 when it was designated as a U.S. Post
Office. The store served some three dozen farm
families in the area, and eventually a Cumberland
Presbyterian Church was also founded in a brush40
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Dallas Historical Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall, 2002, periodical, 2002; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35097/m1/42/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.