Deep Ellum has changed a lot since 1979, when Don Cass starting buying properties. He shared his photos of his first years in the neighborhood. Here we see a grittier Deep Ellum versus the quickly gentrifying entertainment district we now know.
"When I started out down here, I spent three years by myself without any help from anybody," says Cass. "It was boarded up buildings, trees growing inside the buildings, holes in the roof. They were trash, they were tear downs. When I started to build something, no one else wanted it."
The Deep Ellum photos from the late 1970s/early 1980s are courtesy Don Cass and his son, Rich Cass.
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