page_title: Fair Park
section_title: Cultural district
hierarchical_section_title: Fair Park / Cultural district
caption_attribution_description: Music Hall at Fair Park, Dallas, Texas
context_page_description: Fair Park is a recreational and educational complex in Dallas, Texas, United States, located immediately east of downtown. The 277-acre area is registered as a Dallas Landmark and National Historic Landmark; many of the buildings were constructed for the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936.
  Fair Park has been designated a Great Place in America by the American Planning Association.
context_section_description: Many Dallas cultural institutions call Fair Park home.
  Hall of State
  The Hall of State is managed by the Dallas Historical Society, which hosts exhibits inside about Dallas history and culture.
  Old Mill Inn
  The Old Mill Inn was one of the few Texas Centennial Exposition buildings not to incorporate Art Deco styling. Clad in fieldstone with heavy-timber construction, this was the exhibit building for the flour milling industry. It now sporadically serves Fair Park as a restaurant.
  Magnolia Lounge and (former) Hall of Religion
  This little-known project by New York architect William Lescaze introduced European Modernism to Texas in 1936. The design of this hospitality lounge for the Magnolia Petroleum Company included elements commonly found in Art Deco architecture. However, the building's overall image was radically different from that of any other structure at the Texas Centennial Exposition.
  Site of Theatre '47, the first professional, regional theater company in the United States, the small performing space, the Margo Jones Theatre pays tribute to the visionary founder of America's regional theater movement Margo Jones. Immediately adjacent to the Magnolia Lounge is the former Hall of Religion.
  African American Museum
  The current museum building occupies virtually the same site as the Texas Centennial Exposition's Hall of Negro Life. It boasts a permanent collection that consists of the works of such highly regarded African American artists as Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Larry D. Alexander, John T. Biggers, Clementine Hunter, Benny Andrews, Edward Mitchell Bannister and Arthello Beck
  The Leonhardt Lagoon
  South of the Midway, George Dahl arranged Dallas's future cultural institutions informally around a tranquil lagoon, offering Texas Centennial exposition visitors a peaceful, naturalistic counterpoint to the activity of the exposition.
  In 1981, Patricia Johanson was commissioned to redesign and restore the badly degraded lagoon. Since reopening in 1986, the redesigned lagoon has become recognized as a major earth sculpture and one of the earliest examples of art as bioremediation.
  Museum of Nature and Science
  The Museum of Nature & Science occupied two buildings around the lagoon (one named "The Science Place"), and a planetarium next to the WRR building, before moving most of its operations to the new Perot campus at Victory Park in December 2012. The former History Building remains open on weekends as a secondary campus of the Perot Museum. The IMAX theatre and planetarium at the Fair Park campus are shuttered.
  The History Building, once the Museum of Natural History, was designed for the Texas Centennial Exposition as a monolithic, rectangular box. The entrance features three vertical window bays with decorative aluminum mullions. Flanking it are paired pilasters with shell-motif capitals. The rest of the building is clad in limestone. In 1988, the northeast corner of the building was excavated, creating a series of landscaped terraces.
  Fair Park Band Shell
  The concentric plaster arches of the Band Shell comprise an essentially Art Deco composition. Elements of the Streamline Moderne style are present in the reinforced concrete backstage building. Lighting pylons surround the sloping 5,000-seat amphitheater.
  Texas Discovery Gardens
  This was the original Horticulture Building for the Texas Centennial Exposition. It has since been altered by exterior renovations and additions, including the minimalist glass Blachly Conservatory. In the gardens behind the main structure is a model home that the Portland Cement Company originally built for the Exposition.
  Cotton Bowl
  The Cotton Bowl stadium was built in below-grade in 1930, and was originally known as "Fair Park Stadium." Subsequent expansions resulted in a present capacity of 92,200. The Cotton Bowl Classic college football bowl game was played there from 1937–2009. Annually during the State Fair of Texas, it hosts the AT&T Red River Rivalry game between the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma, along with the Southwest Airlines State Fair Classic gam
caption: Music Hall at Fair Park
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