The failed socialist utopian dream that helped make Dallas a major city
Julia Barton on Mar 28, 2016 @ 5:53 PM
... Back in 1972, Scovell was just a 26-year-old accountant when he was hired by Ray Hunt, heir to the H.L. Hunt oil fortune, who was starting a commercial development venture ...
Scovell went hunting through Dallas history, looking for some inspiration. And that’s when he came across the story of La Réunion. Hunt’s planned development was nowhere near the site of this old colony, but “when I saw that I said, you know, that’s the name” ...
In developer John Scovell’s estimation, La Réunion was an idealistic, harmless experiment. Harmless enough that he’s built a whole shrine to the socialist venture in the lobby of his Hyatt Regency hotel, the shiny building attached to Reunion Tower ...
Many of the colonists did head back to Europe, including Considerant. But about 150 stayed, and historians credit Dallas’s early growth to the sudden arrival these people, among them architects, musicians, builders, bankers and editors. When the Civil War broke out, many of those immigrants tried hard not take a side — some even hid out in Mexico to avoid the Confederate draft. After the War, the Reconstruction government needed non-Confederates to run the town: there they were, these battered idealists ...
http://www.globalpost.com/article/6752031/2016/03/28/failed-socialist-utopian-dream-made-dallas-major-city
