The History

For over a century, the Belo Mansion has stood as a stately symbol of Dallas' cultural civic and commercial history. This national landmark house is named after Colonel Alfred Horatio Belo, a decorated Civil War hero from North Carolina who became one of the most influential business and civic leaders in Dallas history.

Colonel Belo came to Texas in 1865 and went to work for the Galveston News as a bookkeeper. By 1876, he owned the newspaper. In 1885, Col. Belo and his family - wife Nettie, son Alfred, Jr. and daughter Jeanette - moved to Dallas to start a sister paper, The Dallas Morning News. Dallas was in transition from a southwestern frontier town with a population of 2,000 in 1868, to a modern city with a population of 38,067 by 1890, making Dallas the largest city in Texas. In the late 1890s, Col. Belo purchased a frame house at the corner of Ross and Pearl in his wife's name with $27,500 from her own funds. The property had earlier belonged to Captain William Gaston, a pioneer Dallas banker. Col. and Mrs. Belo built a magnificent neoclassical revival structure that, with its distinctive Corinthian columns and pedimented portico, was reminiscent of his family home in Salem, North Carolina. The contractor was Daniel Morgan, who also built the Dallas County Courthouse now known as "Old Red." At that time, Ross Avenue was the finest residential street in the city. It was also the first street in Dallas to be paved. In 1900, the family celebrated the marriage of Alfred Belo, Jr. and his bride, Helen Ponder of Denton. However, Col. Belo died soon afterward in 1901, and Alfred, Jr. died of meningitis in 1906. Nettie Belo continued to reside in the mansion with her daughter-in-law and her two granddaughters until her death in 1913. Ill health forced Helen Ponder Belo to leave Dallas in 1922, marking the end of the Belo family's occupancy of their mansion. In 1926, Sparkman-Loudermilk Funeral Home signed a 50 year lease on the property. The business substantially remodeled the mansion and a chapel was added. As a funeral home, the mansion served some of the area's most famous citizens, including the 1934 funeral of notorious outlaw Clyde Barrow (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) which drew thousands of curiosity seekers. The historical significance of the Belo Mansion was recognized in 1976, when it was one of only seven Dallas County sites accepted into the National Register of Historic Places. In, 1977, Col Belo's granddaughter, Helen Belo Morrison (who was born in the home in 1902), agreed to sell the property to the Dallas Bar Foundation, feeling that its plan to restore the home was in accordance with the family's principles and desires. In 1979, following two years of painstaking restoration, the Belo Mansion became home to the Dallas Bar Association. The proud history of the Belo Mansion continues today. It houses offices for the Dallas Bar Association, Dallas Bar Foundation, and Dallas Association of Young Lawyers, thus serving the entire metropolitan Dallas legal profession. It also serves the greater community, providing a classic setting for banquets, weddings, receptions and other functions.

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