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Yesterday, I came across a Flickr page maintained by Justin Cozart, who’s been uploading in recent days photos of a Dallas that no longer exists — as you can tell by the photo of the Baker Hotel above, taken as it was being imploded in June 1980. But not all of Cozart’s photos are of long-gone structures: Among his treasures are conceptual renderings for downtown skyscrapers planned but never built, including fascinating what-ifs sketched out by the likes of I.M. Pei and even Frank Lloyd Wright.
When contacted by Unfair Park, Cozart, a fifth-generation Dallasite who works for Mapsco, wrote that the photos and drawings came out of a “big mysterious box that my grandfather had.” His reason for sorting through and posting the pictures? Dallas, he says, has “always been a place that has been fairly important to me. Even if it is soulless and corporate, it’s my soulless and corporate. I thought it would be fun to post stuff that not a lot of people get to see. It turns out all history books stop after [World War II], you know?” And he promises there’s much, much more to come: “I still have, like, eight boxes … to sort through!” We’ll gladly help. –Robert Wilonsky
