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A Message from our PTA President, Kamela Aboussie
Dear Bradfield Families,
If you haven’t guessed by now, I am loving the Centennial Year excuse for a trip down Bradfield memory lane. As we look forward to 100th year celebrations over the next few months, one way we’re celebrating at Open House in March is with a display looking back through the last century of Bradfield. You’ve heard plenty about the trusty 50th Year scrapbook I reference so often, and within it is a very charming speech that was given at Bradfield’s 50th Birthday Party.
The speech is an overview of Bradfield history, by the decades, and begins setting the stage for what life in Dallas and in the Park Cities looked like in the 1920s.
1920s Dallas was a sweet spot between World War I and the Great Depression, when oil was flowing, development was bubbling, the population doubled, and Dallas got its first skyscraper, The Magnolia Building. John Sherman Bradfield, a beloved leader and businessman, was the President of the Highland Park School Board. Under his leadership the board voted in 1924 to buy the property that would soon become John S. Bradfield Elementary School for $16,000.
Bradfield was the third school built within the district, after Armstrong in 1914 and Highland Park High School in 1922. At the time, the land now known as 4300 Southern was a wheat farm, and there was no water, no sewer, no gas and no electrical…a big project, for sure! The district purchased 50 trees for $35 each (can you imagine?!) Our development project this year pales in comparison, and our new trees certainly did not cost $35!
Our neighborhood was also bustling. Just south of Bradfield, Armstrong Parkway was designed as an entrance into Highland Park to the south to preserve the historic pecan tree. And to our east, Highland Park Village was planned in 1929, opening in 1931, as the first neighborhood shopping center in the United States.
Picture Bradfield families bumping along newly paved roads in their Model Ts, amid wheat fields, to drop their children off at Bradfield and visit the filling station in Highland Park Village. Simple times, for sure. But so much courage, foresight, hard work, and innovation!
In planning for the next century of Bradfield, it’s so much fun to know our history. I hope looking back as we look forward gives you all the same sense of groundedness and hope that it does me. How lucky we are to be at Bradfield right now to help shape the future and to continue on the legacies established for us 100 years ago!
Enjoy the day off from school tomorrow, and I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Love,
Kam
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