Virginia Savage McAlester: Architectural Historian and Preservation Advocate (1943–2020)

Virginia McAlester, architectural historian, was born Virginia Wallace Savage to Dorothy Minnie (Harris) Savage and Wallace Hamilton Savage on May 13, 1943, in Dallas, Texas. Wallace Savage was a lawyer and mayor of Dallas from 1949 to 1951. Virginia Savage had one younger sister, Dorothy Harris “Dotsy” Savage. Virginia Savage graduated from the Hockaday School in 1961 and studied architecture at Radcliffe College and Harvard University. After earning her bachelor of arts degree and graduating with honors from Radcliffe College in 1965, Savage moved back to Dallas. On November 25, 1965, she married Clement McCarty Talkington, a vascular surgeon, in Dallas. Together they had two children: Clement McCarty Talkington, Jr., and Amy Talkington, a filmmaker. The couple divorced in early 1977, and Savage married Arcie Lee McAlester, a geology professor at Southern Methodist University, on July 11 later that year.

Virginia McAlester lived most of her life in East Dallas and advocated to preserve its historic homes and improve its neighborhoods. In 1972 she helped found the Historic Preservation League (later Preservation Dallas). She served as vice-president (1972–74) and president (1975–76, 1993–94) of the organization, with which she worked to secure the 1973 designation of Swiss Avenue as Dallas’s first historic district. In 1977 she helped establish the Historic Dallas Fund, the league’s revolving fund for the purchase and resale of historic homes for restoration. As chair of this fund, she helped revitalize numerous homes in Munger Place that otherwise might have been demolished. McAlester was also a founding member and president (1984–86) of the Friends of Fair Park, an organization that promotes the use of Fair Park and supports restoration of its historic buildings, and chair of the Fair Park Development Board (1987–89). Her efforts contributed to the designation of Fair Park as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. McAlester’s service in other preservation organizations included membership on the Dallas Landmark Commission for multiple years between 1973 and 2004. She was on the commission’s Fair Park Task Force (1990–2019), as well as chair of its Preservation Tax Incentives Task Force (1992).

McAlester also served on the board of advisors for the National Trust for Historic Preservation from 1973 to 1981—she became an advisor emeritus in 1988—and on the State of Texas National Register Board of Review from 1979 to 1982. She was active in community planning efforts. Among other efforts, she chaired the East Dallas Design Committee’s Physical Development Committee in the mid-1970s, served as an advisory board member for the city’s 2006 Forward Dallas Comprehensive Plan, and was a member of the city’s Urban Design Advisory Committee from 2006 until 2020. McAlester’s other board memberships included the Summerlee Commission on Texas History (see SUMMERLEE FOUNDATION), the Texas Historic Resource Center at Texas A&M University, the Museum of African American Life and Culture, and the Thanks-Giving Square Foundation (see THANKS-GIVING SQUARE).

In addition to her historic preservation work in Dallas, McAlester was known for her published works on domestic architecture. Her most famous work, A Field Guide to American Houses, was co-written with her second husband, A. Lee McAlester, and published in 1984. The work is considered an authoritative text on the subject and was declared one of the outstanding reference books by the American Library Association for that year. The second edition, published in 2013, included descriptions of more recent architectural styles, such as McMansions, which McAlester dubbed “millennium mansions.” Additional publications written with Lee McAlester include Discover Dallas Fort Worth (1988), Great American Houses and Their Architectural Styles (1994), and A Field Guide to America’s Historic Neighborhoods and Museum Houses: The Western States (1998). Great American Suburbs: The Homes of the Park Cities, Dallas, published in 2008, was co-written with Willis Cecil Winters and Prudence Mackintosh.

Among McAlester’s many professional achievements, she was also the first female president of the Harvard Club of Dallas (1987–88). She received an award for excellence from the Dallas Historical Society in 1984 and an honorary membership from the Texas Institute of Architects in 1987. In 2006 the Dallas County Heritage Society honored her with a lifetime achievement award. In 2014 the city of Dallas honored McAlester’s decades of advocacy and preservation efforts with a key to the city. In 2017 the American Institute of Architects granted her an honorary membership, and the Friends of Fair Park honored her with its Spirit of the Centennial Award. Two years later she was awarded an honorary doctor of arts degree by Southern Methodist University. After a long battle with myelofibrosis, Virginia McAlester died on April 9, 2020, in Dallas. Her papers are held by DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.