Uptown Dallas keeps a green front porch, and its name is Griggs Park. Tucked at the corner of the State Thomas Historic District — the city’s beloved Victorian cottage neighborhood off Woodall Rodgers Freeway — this quiet expanse of lawn unfolds beneath a postcard view of the downtown skyline, close enough to admire and far enough to breathe.
The park carries the name of the Reverend A. R. Griggs, the pioneering pastor of New Hope Baptist Church, Dallas’s first independent Black congregation. A seated bronze honors him here, a reminder that this lawn is not just scenery: it is a piece of Dallas history with deep roots in the community that helped build the city.
On any fine morning the park fills with the rituals that make a city feel like home: neighbors walking dogs down the paths, picnics spread on the grass, families drifting toward the playground and readers claiming a shady bench with the skyline for a backdrop. It is a small park in acreage and a generous one in spirit — the kind of local secret residents are quietly proud of.
Griggs Park also sits inside a park system on the rise. The Dallas Park and Recreation Department counts more than 450 parks citywide, and its current Park and Recreation Master Plan — now being updated for its next five-year stretch — reads system surveys, demographics and neighborhood needs to decide where new investment goes. Well-loved neighborhood parks like this one are exactly what that planning is meant to protect and improve.
Come at golden hour, when the towers catch the light and the lawn turns the color of honey. Bring a blanket, bring a friend, and let Dallas show you its softer side.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Chet2009.
