The Bishop Arts District sits in north Oak Cliff, about two miles southwest of downtown Dallas, near the intersection of North Bishop Avenue and Davis Street. Oak Cliff was founded in 1887 when John S. Armstrong and Thomas L. Marsalis bought a 320-acre farm on the west side of the Trinity River, and it was annexed by Dallas in 1903. The Houston Street Viaduct opened in February 1912 and was acclaimed at the time as the longest concrete bridge in the world.
The district was developed as warehouses and shops in the 1920s, and in the 1930s a trolley stop along Davis became the busiest in Dallas. It declined from the mid-1960s into the early 1980s, and in the autumn of 1984 Jim Lake began buying up the rundown storefronts. Part of the area is listed on the National Register as the North Bishop Avenue Commercial Historic District, added in June 1994.
North Oak Cliff holds several designated districts: Winnetka Heights, with more than 600 residential structures across 50 city blocks, designated by Dallas in 1981; Lake Cliff, roughly 75 acres, designated a Dallas Landmark in 1997; and the Tenth Street Historic District, designated in 1993, which began when formerly enslaved people settled near a burial ground dating to 1846. The Texas Theatre on West Jefferson Boulevard opened in 1931 and the Kessler Theater on West Davis Street in 1941.
No DART light rail station lies within the district. The Dallas Streetcar, whose Bishop Arts extension opened in August 2016, runs from here to Union Station by way of the Houston Street Viaduct.
28 apartment buildings in Bishop Arts / North Oak Cliff, holding 6,374 units between them. This part of the directory takes in North Oak Cliff, Bishop Arts and Oak Cliff. Buildings range from 58 to 372 units. The oldest listed here is Holiday Hills, completed in 1961; the newest is Emblem Ravine, from 2025. Every listing carries the same fields — units, year built, floors, and five amenities you can filter on — and every fact traces to a real source.