SMU Backyard

For years we have thought of a beautiful SMU campus as being entered by Bishop Boulevard and surrounded by Highland Park and University Park. The surrounding perimeter was equally beautiful, made up of architect-designed homes and churches. These included the Mark Lemmon designed, architecturally significant, Normandy style home on Mockingbird, the elegant Methodist Church architect Mark Lemmon designed on Hillcrest, and the University Park neoclassical and Georgian homes on the other side of SMU continuing the look of the SMU sorority houses close by. Now all of that has changed. Rather than from Highland Park, entering SMU on Bishop Boulevard, looking at the domed Dallas Hall at the end of the vista, one now enters SMU Boulevard from Central Expressway or Greenville Avenue and continues through a corridor of athletic fields, stadiums, arenas and operational plants before the academic buildings begin. The shift in the organization and physical layout of this growing campus also means SMU is now surrounded by a much different environment than Highland Park homes. SMU is now adjacent to bars, commercial buildings, mass transit tracks, power plants, mid-rise apartments, and an urban edge. An academic sanctuary has penetrated the bubble and becomes an urban campus with an urban edge!
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