Neighborhoods

Northwood Hills Addition

In August of 1959 the Home Builders Association of Dallas County featured several houses along Sprucewood Drive, located in the original development of Northwood Hills Addition, in the association’s annual Parade of Homes. Developers William T. Troth, George F. Mixon, Sr., and George F. Mixon, Jr. advertised houses in the Northwood Hills Addition as “ultra-modern homes ranging from $40,000 to $60,000, with every conceivable home improvement and better-living feature included to provide optimum values for home buyers desiring the best.” That same year The Dallas Morning News described Northwood Hills, with its large setbacks, gently sloping hills, and proximity to two golf courses, as “the first post war attempt to duplicate a ‘Park Cities environment’ in North Dallas.”

Before Mixon, Mixon, and Troth bought the Northwood Hills land in 1955, the George Drewery family owned and used the Northwood Hills area as farmland for three generations. Even after 268 houses stood completed in the first phase of Northwood Hills Addition, early residents would still pass fields of grazing cattle all the way south to Northwest Highway, and saw little else but cotton fields all the way north to Belt Line Road.

Located east of Northwood Country Club, the original development of the Northwood Hills Addition is bounded by Hillcrest Road on the west, Carillon Drive on the east, Spring Valley Road on the north, and Alpha Road and Peyton Drive on the south. As the Northwood Hills Addition continued growing north of Spring Valley Road up to Belt Line Road, and west of Hillcrest Road out to Stonemill Drive, Mixon, Mixon, and Troth sold acreage to help pay for street and alley paving: the developers sold thirty acres of their land at the northwest corner of Spring Valley and Coit Road to Trammell Crow for a shopping center, and later sold thirty more acres to the city of Dallas for Fretz Park. During this period of growth, a local landscaper named Clodus Fields planted oak and magnolia seedlings throughout the Northwood Hills Addition, seedlings that grew into the mature trees that have come to define the neighborhood.

Today, both the original houses as well as many of the original owners (including developer George Mixon) remain in the Northwood Hills Addition. The “partially wooded land,” variety of architecture, deep set backs, and expansive lots that originally attracted buyers to the area continue to characterize the Northwood Hills Addition as an appealing North Dallas neighborhood.

Author: Michelle Stanard
Editor: Michael Hazel
Photographs by: Michelle Stannard