By BJ Austin & Jerome Weeks, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-815408.mp3
Dallas, TX – Trammell Crow began with a single warehouse built in 1948. Crow built the familiar Trade Mart, Apparel Mart, Market Hall, the World Trade Center, Info Mart and the Anatole Hotel along Stemmons Expressway. Dallas City Councilman Dave Neumann, former Chairman of the Stemmons Corridor Business Association, says Dallas owes a lot to Trammell Crow.
Neumann: And, out of the building and creation of the Apparel Mart, created an industry of not only apparel makers, but for thousands of jobs for employees and the related suppliers and subsidiary industries. So the apparel industry was created out of Mr. Crow's vision of having an Apparel Mart.
Crow's 1959 Dallas Trade Mart was a million square feet featuring an atrium - the first in the nation to use that design feature. Crow built six downtown Dallas skyscrapers, but Kevin Bryant, Crow Holdings General Counsel, says Trammel Crow's legacy goes far beyond bricks and mortar.
Bryant: He was an incredible mentor. A huge number of people who have very successful real estate companies are alumni of Trammell Crow Company, and a part of his legacy.
Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, former CEO of Turner Construction, says Trammell Crow built partnerships that elevated the project AND the people involved.
Leppert: Those partnerships only work if you've got someone at the top who cares more about the individuals than they do about themselves. And Trammell was that kind of a partner. So many times when I had a chance to just visit with him one on one, they were all conversations when you just walked away feeling good about the world.
This is Jerome Weeks.
In addition to real estate, the late Trammell Crow acquired a vast collection of Asian art. Yet it became the source for one of the smallest though highly prized museums in Texas, the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art.
Crow developed his love for Asian treasures from his business dealings in the Far East. He and his wife Margaret visited China in 1976 - their first of 14 visits. Amy Hofland, director of the museum, says that Trammell Crow began by collecting jade. Then his interest expanded to almost anything Asian that spoke to him.
HOFLAND: "It was a relationship we hear about often with collectors. It was passionate, it was driven. He collected tiny pieces of jade that would fit into your pocket and large architectural forms that grace our galleries today. So he was whimsical about his collection and incredibly determined."
Crow collected more than six thousand pieces from China, Japan, India and Southeast Asia. The artworks originally graced the family's ranch, office buildings and the Anatole Hotel. To display some 560 or so of the best works, the Crow family adapted two pavilions behind the Trammell Crow Center in the Arts District. The Crow Collection of Asian Art opened in 1998. It has been called a jewel box of a museum.' It has only 10,000 square feet of galleries.
That's not even one-fifth the size of the Nasher Center, the other small museum in the Arts District.
HOFLAND: "But the spaces work well in that our focus is on small, pocket exhibitions. We like to take people on a journey but not a long one."
It's a journey anyone can take. The museum shares Trammell Crow's love of Asian art by being free of charge.