Terry Box of The Dallas Morning News said that the Northwest Highway “was nothing more than muddy right of way.” The area that would later become Preston Center was a Dairy Farm in the early to mid-20th Century.
Preston Hollow eventually extended from east of Preston Road, slightly north of Walnut Hill Lane, west of Midway Road and southwest of Northwest Highway.
The developers intended Preston Hollow to be what Box said was “more than a flatland suburb on the fringes of a new and growing Dallas.” Doctors, entrepreneurs, industrialists, lawyers, and oil businesspeople moved to Preston Hollow. Many built country-style estates that housed horses and stables. A private school which later became St. Mark’s School of Texas opened in the area.
In the early 1930s during the Depression, Edward James Solon, the treasurer of a company called Interstate and the partner who came with Karl Hoblitzelle from Chicago to Dallas, purchased the first Preston Hollow corner property at Douglas and Avrille Way. DeLoache built a Dillbeck designed house on the property. This Tudor styled home was considered the first of the many large homes built in what is now termed the Old Preston Hollow area-an earlier large house in the area, by the pond near Avrill, was considered as part of the farm.
In the 1930s, moving beyond the Northwest Highway was considered “going into the sticks” and risky in terms of attracting affluent homeowners. Later many people said that E.J. Solon started the North Dalllas migration.
Incorporated as a municipality in 1939, and provisioned by the Preston Road Fresh Water Supply District, the North Dallas town of Preston Hollow was named for the deep wooded area with creeks and hollows extending westward from Preston Road. The bramble in Preston Hollow was unique in the Dallas area and all home builders in the area were to preserve it as part of the covenant.
