The Magnolia Lounge

The Magnolia Lounge at Fair Park was built for the 1936 Centennial Exposition as the corporate display for the Magnolia Petroleum Company. The revered clothier Stanley Marcus suggested the idea of a lounge—a cool dark place where patrons of the massive 1936 Centennial Exposition could come and relax. The Magnolia Lounge even had air conditioning and screened moving picture images of travel scenes in Texas.

Architecturally, the Magnolia Lounge at Fair Park is the first example of a modernist architecture in Dallas. The sleek design from Swiss-American architect William Lescaze married European Modernism with elements of Art Deco. The glass-brick lobby, round windows, cantilevered decks and metal piers suggest the design of an ocean liner. The Magnolia Lounge was, and continues to be, one of the most unique modern buildings in Dallas.

In 1947, the Magnolia Lounge become home to Margo Jones’ theater company, named “Theater ‘47,” “Theater ‘48” and so on. Between 1947 and her untimely death in 1955, Jones staged 85 productions at the Magnolia Lounge, including the world premiere of Inherit the Wind (on January 10, 1955) and original works by such playwrights as the then-unknown Tennessee Williams.Margo’s theater-in-the-round brought innovation and unprecedented attention to the Dallas arts scene and signaled the birth of regional American theater. Today, the Magnolia Lounge continues a theatrical tradition, playing host to several theater and performing arts groups.

After much of Fair Park fell into disrepair in the 1950s through 1970s, in 1987 a non-profit organization, Friends of Fair Park, raised the money to renovate the Magnolia Lounge, which began a wave of restoration and preservation that gained Fair Park designation as a national historic landmark as the largest collection of art deco art and architecture in the United States. The Magnolia Lounge is still home to Friends of Fair Park as well as the Video Association of Dallas, a non-profit media arts organization which uses the historic theater for screenings of alternative media and independent film.