If you’ve driven Spring Valley Road in Far North Dallas, you’ve passed it. Six lanes of traffic, big houses, and tucked behind a modest modern building, about four and a half acres of woods, water, and more than 80 large sculptures. It’s Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, and it’s been there longer than almost anything around it.
How a gravel road became an art destination
In 1953, painter Donald Vogel and his wife, Peggy, bought six wooded acres on what was then a dead-end gravel road. Spring Valley was prairie. They closed on April 1, which is a pretty good date to start a modern art gallery in 1950s Dallas.
Donald built a frame shop, then a family home designed by architect John Wesley Jones, and the gallery grew from there. The Valley House name came in 1954. Over the next decades the Vogels showed everyone from regional Texas painters to Henry Moore, who had a sculpture show there in 1965. A Monet waterlily painting that passed through the gallery now belongs to the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is one of the longest-running galleries in Dallas.
Not everything went smoothly. In October 1964, White Rock Creek flooded and put 54 inches of water in the house.
Today, the Vogels’ son Kevin and his wife, Cheryl, run the gallery and live in Valley House.
The garden
Landscape architect Clarence Roy designed the original sculpture garden between 1957 and 1959, and landscape architect Erika Farkac Vogel spent two decades reworking it later on. What you’ll find now:
- Gravel paths winding under mature trees
- A quarter-acre pond with water lilies and yellow irises
- Stone-slab footbridges over a stream
- More than 80 large sculptures, abstract and representational, placed so you come across them one at a time
- Wildlife that didn’t get the memo that this is Dallas: turtles, frogs, butterflies, and the occasional bobcat
On view now
The gallery’s current show is David A. Dreyer: Cenote-Resonant Light, on view through November 21. The artist is giving a talk at the gallery on Saturday, October 24, at 11 a.m.
Before you go
- Address: 6616 Spring Valley Road, Dallas
- Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Sunday. If the gallery is closed, so is the garden.
- Admission: Free.
- Check in at the gallery every time before you head into the garden.
- Stay on the gravel paths.
- Professional photography and photo shoots aren’t allowed. Phone pictures for yourself are a different thing.
- Bringing a group or want to paint out there? Call ahead.
- Leave the stroller in the car. Pebble paths and footbridges aren’t stroller-friendly.
Give yourself time. This isn’t a place to rush through. Some of the best pieces are the ones you only spot on the second loop.
The creek that ties it together
White Rock Creek runs along the back of Valley House, and the same creek winds through The Parks on Hillcrest, the new 17-townhome community at Hillcrest and Alpha that I wrote about this week, where the White Rock hike and bike trail crosses the property. It’s a good reminder that this corner of Far North Dallas has more green space tucked into it than most people realize.
If living near places like this matters to you, I’d love to show you the neighborhoods that put you minutes away. Reply to the newsletter or reach out anytime.
Know the Neighborhood, Not Just the House
I’m Jamie Marancenbaum, and I help people buy and sell homes across the DFW area. A good move is about more than square footage and comps. It’s about the streets, the schools, what’s being built down the road, and the stories behind the places you drive past every day. That’s what I write about here, and it’s what I bring to every client.
Thinking about buying, selling, or just curious what your home is worth today? Get your free home value at jmarancenbaum.cbapex.com, or reach me anytime at (469) 417-9661 or [email protected].
Jamie Marancenbaum, REALTOR® | Midtown Market Group | Coldwell Banker Apex | Texas License #0645858
18260 Preston Road, Suite 110, Dallas, TX 75252
Richardson | Prestonwood | Far North Dallas | Addison | DFW Area
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