"The Flats", Original Musical Drama
About Garland's Early Days
Black Community,
On Stage At The Atrium
on Sunday, April 14
A new musical drama, "The Flats: Cradle of a Community", about Garland's Original Black Community, will be presented at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 14, at The Atrium in downtown Garland.
The Flats was a free-standing Black community with its own stores, churches, homes, and a school.
With an original script and nine original songs, "The Flats" focuses on the time period in the 1930s and 1940s, during segregation, when students attended the Garland Colored School on the site where The Atrium now sits. The story depicts the solidarity, vibrancy, and community life of "The Flats" citizens as they dealt with the challenges and realities of that particular era.
Honoring History,
Planning for Tomorrow.
Welcome to
Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street
"Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street is about more than just preserving old homes, although they have done this quite well. The organization is about making life better for others by helping others interpret their history and tell their stories."
—Garland Mayor Scott LeMay
We've successfully told the story of our reclaimed 110-year-old Garland neighborhood. Now we're being good stewards of the treasure trove of information we have learned and are in the business of enabling others to pick up the torch and build community by telling their own stories.
How We Can Help You
Building on skills and contacts that we've honed over a decade of interpreting the history of our own two-block area so that others can understand, Friends of Magic 11th can help you make an impact in your community.
In telling our own 110-year-old history for the past decade, we've acquired skills, contacts, and local, state, and national networks that can help you make an impact. We help you navigate the system, whether it's applying for a state marker or a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, applying for state and federal tax credits to restore a historic property, applying for grants, researching your own neighborhood's history, reclaiming a decaying neighborhood, building community, and turning your neighborhood into a destination.
We help deserving family and neighborhood histories get out there to the wider audience, including untold, deserving stories that help communities come together and reach future generations.
Garland's first Latino family has been honored with a Texas Historical Marker, getting the recognition they deserve. We can help you identify your own sites and individuals that are worthy as well.
We help history come alive by using the performing arts. We have turned local histories into musical dramas to inspire an audience of thousands. Visual arts are also an important part of what we do.
We have performed three original musical dramas and have created and performed several other original songs to help audiences better understand historic events. Artists with ties to 11th Street have produced original works to enhance our history-telling.
We use a variety of means to get untold stories out there—a documentary, historic markers, historic home tours, social media, and presentations on how to interpret history.
"Saving Magic 11th Street" is a five-time award-winning documentary that describes the reclamation of the historic Travis College Hill neighborhood, with 11th Street at its heart.
Our Purpose
Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street is a nonprofit charitable organization that works for the betterment of Garland through historic preservation, community development, and improvement of Garland's 11th Street as well as the wider downtown area. A secondary purpose is to recognize under-recognized individuals and sites that are part of Garland's history.
Our Homes
Click on the gallery images below to read more about the history of each home!
Our Volunteers
Although the Travis College Hill Neighborhood, with 11th Street at its heart, consists of only 12 homes with no more than 25 people, Magic 11th Street has built a huge tribe of supporters—people who buy into the passion and live out the passion.
At "Christmas-town 2022" more than 75 volunteers participated in the event and more than 300 attendees bought into the vision, learned our history, and were equipped to pick up the torch to carry into their own neighborhoods to bring their own stories to light.
Interested in becoming a volunteer? Contact us today for more information!
