Photo courtesy of Rachael Hildebrandt.
While this week is full of preparations for family feasts across the country, Hampton Hills neighbors recently held their own feast. A community dinner beneath the tree canopy of South Montreal Avenue for its centennial celebration Saturday, Nov. 1.
Hampton Hills first appeared in print with an advertisement in The Dallas Morning News published on Sept. 14, 1924. The neighborhood was later built up with Craftsman and Tudor-style homes featuring unique brick and stonework, bold archways and stained glass. Â
For the community dinner, the street was filled with a long, running table shared by about 120 neighbors, their guests and even former residents who drove in to celebrate the anniversary over beautiful linens and candelabras.
We caught up with a couple neighbors to share what the triple-digit milestone means to them.
First tell us about yourself. How long have you lived in the neighborhood and what was your role in putting together this feast?
Elizabeth Erickson: I moved into my home in June of 2023. It’s a long story of how I purchased my home, but I immediately began building community with neighbors who’ve become very dear friends. We host happy hours throughout the year and we, Rachael Hildebrandt, Tim Flannery and I, were talking after one of the happy hours earlier this spring and I was like, ‘Hey, are we doing something for the centennial?’ And Tim began just describing that we need to do a dinner with a long table in the street and we’re like ‘Well, what street?’ And I’m on Montreal Avenue, and there’s the tree canopy and he said we need to do it under the trees of Montreal. So out of that conversation, I kind of became one of the people on the planning committee.
Rachael Hildebrandt: I am the vice president of engagement for the Hampton Hills Neighborhood Association, and I’ve lived in the neighborhood for just over two years now. I was one of the main planners of the community dinner. It was a really special role to get to play and just a really monumental year for Hampton Hills.
How did the community dinner go? What was the best part?
Erickson: The dinner went flawlessly. It was interesting because we kind of had to hurry for the setup because it was raining earlier in the day and then the sun came through exactly when it needed to. Neighbors literally were just coming out of their houses, helping assemble. 3rd Place Commons was incredible to work with. They did such a great job with the food. What was really special for me was the dinner was excellent, but it really was the neighbors all coming to the table. It was so cool for friends to reconnect and people coming in from out of town. The dinner was great, but it’s not about the food. It’s not about the ambiance. It’s absolutely about the people, and I get teary even, just that we were able to bring people together. I think that is the most magical part, that people showed up and got to have just a fabulous time connecting with each other over food.
Hildebrandt: It was just really cool. We had a group of probably 10 neighbors that were part of the planning committee and we had been working for several months to get the event to the state that it ended in, and it was just really cool to see our vision come to life after just a lot of different meetings and planning that we had put together. The neighbors knew it was going to be a dinner and they knew where the dinner was going to be, but there were a lot of details that we surprised guests with. That was really fun to see, just the reaction to some of the details that they had no idea were coming.
We partnered with 3rd Place Commons and they helped put together our meal, and they were really intentional about the food that they put together. It wasn’t just standard catering by any means. They crafted a menu based on the year the neighborhood was founded and were really intentional with the food piece of it. We had a really cool design vision that we got to bring to life. I think it was just a lot more detailed than people expected it to be. We had a really cool DJ play records stemming from that time frame as well. Just a lot of details that went into the event that I think impressed people.
What do you love most about your neighborhood and what do you hope will come for the next 100 years of Hampton Hills?
Erickson: I love, and I experience this personally, that my neighbors aren’t just neighbors. Some of them are friends and some of them have become my chosen family. I am single and still looking for my husband and hope to have a partner and children in this home. But to be able to have chosen family as neighbors is something that’s so special. And what I hope for the next 100 years is that this neighborhood is marked by family. Not just individual families in households, but that there’s a sense of community, of belonging, of people sharing amongst themselves in community and that’s what I mean by family.
Hildebrandt: The coolest part is it’s a really thriving community and so you get to know your neighbors really easily. I’ve only lived here two and a half years and of the 120 people at the event, I probably had met 80 of them before, and so I don’t think too many people can say they know 80 neighbors. And that’s just from other events we do and just walking the neighborhood. People are just super friendly and just are really passionate about not only Oak Cliff, but about the neighborhood as well. It’s cool to see that many people that really care about something.
I just hope to see that community continue and people just wanting to be neighborly and have that community. I think that’s the most exciting part about the neighborhood and I think this event gave people an opportunity to meet people that they had never met before. I just hope that the community continues going forward and people find other people to have connections with.
These interviews have been edited for brevity and clarity.
