by Claude Thompson

Downtown Dallas' Pioneer Plaza is Texas Landscape Architecture in the truest definition of "vernacular design." The unique plan replicates the North Texas landscape of the frontier times, with rocky rolling hills, tall grasses, short trees, and cut by the shallow stream filled with rapids and fed by a waterfall.

However, Pioneer Plaza's captivating feature is its sculpture. Coming over the hills is a bronze herd of longhorn cattle, driven by cowboys on horseback. The three drovers and twenty of the steers, each of which stands nearly eight feet tall, are already in place. When complete in 1995, the column will include 76 pieces and stretch some 450 feet, the largest bronze monument in the world.

The plaza gets its name from one of the oldest cemeteries in Dallas, which it adjoins, and in which are interred many of the city's pioneers. The site also lies along what was the Shawnee Trail, first of the famous cattle drive routes which supplied Southwestern beef to the northern markets. Stockyards were located in the area once the railroad replaced the trail.

Landscape Architect Michael Kendall of the local Slaney-Santana Group designed the plaza intentionally to provide a soft oasis in contrast to the other plazas within Dallas' hard and hot urban center. The man-made rock features were bid and constructed from photographs of local natural outcroppings. The stream bed even contains mud and silt, and native aquatic plants, rather than chemicals, provide most of the cleaning of the water.

All of the plant materials used within Pioneer Plaza are native to the region, including ten different species of prairie grass. Mesquite trees, measuring up to fifteen inches in diameter, were transplanted to the site and conceal the lighting system which illuminates the sculptures with a moonlight appearance.

No public funds have been used for Pioneer Plaza, except for the allocation of city-owned land valued at $5 million. The $4.5 million for design, construction and amenities, landscaping and sculptures is being provided by the private, non-profit Dallas Parks Foundation. Dallas-based developer, Trammel Crow, is President of the Foundation and the project's major supporter.

Pioneer Plaza has also attracted controversy. The City's Public Art Committee recommended against the realistic sculpture, calling it "bad art, bad history and a hazard to public safety." The New York Times even made editorial charges that the design "invents a phoney cowtown which more correctly belongs to Dallas' sister city of Fort Worth." However, Pioneer Plaza is already demonstrating its value, attracting daily office workers, tourists and weekend suburbanites.

The plaza is literally at the front door of Dallas' newly expanded Convention Center, next door to City Hall and just a few blocks from major financial and entertainment districts. Visitors lounge in the shade of Mesquite trees, wade in the stream and examine the sculptures, bringing both the historic past and new life to downtown Dallas. LASN