Photo Credit: Breonny Lee
BY Taylor Adams Cogan
Living in Deep Ellum today means having the privilege of provocative art, blossoming music, creative food, and wonderful people. More than 20 years ago, Karen and Sean Fitzgerald made the neighborhood their permanent home for similar reasons, but the entertainment district felt different.
In 2002, the landscape was more uniform, the one- and two-story buildings reigning prevalent and nodding to the neighborhood’s past on nearly every block. AllGood Cafe was just in its first two years, Adair’s Saloon had settled in for nearly 20 years, and we were still almost a decade from Cane Rosso shaking the whole city with its Neapolitan pizza.
It was that year that Karen borrowed her husband’s cell phone to scout properties. They weren’t developers looking to score a spot and make a profit off of a forgotten block – they were looking for a home where they could live and Sean could keep diving into photography.
“We had a house that was great, but not a great photo house. I started looking for something where we could have true live-work space,” she says. “If there was a for sale or for lease sign, I called. We found the building we bought, found a great architect, and we converted it into our home.”
Easier said than done. The 1948 building had lived plenty of life before the couple would make it suitable for living and a photography studio.
“We thought it would take 6 months, and it took 20. That’s how we got here,” she says. “And so, we’ve seen Deep Ellum up, down, and all around. I’m going to call it a happy accident: we didn’t know when we came to Deep Ellum that we’d find a community. We had been living in a neighborhood where we didn’t know our neighbors. But in Deep Ellum, we found it.”
The larger space gave them the opportunity to open up for neighborhood events and meetings, a new kind of space for the neighborhood to find more community at the time.
“It has been interesting to kind of see that,” she says. “We would never have done that if we lived in a house in the suburbs.”
The two are known by many in the neighborhood, from having been bike advocates and Sean serving as president of the Deep Ellum Community Association, among other endeavors.
“What I keep coming back to is a cliché word I hate: It’s real, it’s authentic. When you go to other neighborhoods, they feel like pre-packed, manufactured neighborhoods. Deep Ellum is not that, it’s gritty. So, it’s kind of the same thing, the people are real people.”
Karen loves being able to walk out her front door and be able to choose from 40 different restaurants, she says. It’s something they wouldn’t be able to replicate anywhere else.
“The other thing that I’ve thought is so fascinating is how many people don’t live in the neighborhood and are so passionate about it and stay passionate about it. I don’t think a lot of neighborhoods have that,” she says. “Of course it has its flaws, but once you fall in love with it, it doesn’t let you go.”
While newer, larger buildings have allowed denser living in Deep Ellum, places like the Fitzgeralds’ stand strong but unassuming – you could easily pass by and have no idea humans lay their heads down at night there.
“I can’t think of a better place to be that’s so centrally located to the things I love – downtown, Fair Park – the things I like to do are so close in, “ she says. “To me, I wouldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to live here. IT’s so awesome to not have to get in your car and drive for entertainment.”
Karen has seen the neighborhood through different cycles, along with parts of it soaring upward, creating a new skyline for the once industrial-forward neighborhood that blossomed into a creative haven.
“What I want to see for Deep Ellum is to grow organically. It’s been great to see. I believe the apartment buildings are going up because we need density to support the restaurants and clubs. And, Deep Ellum needs to continue to be the rebellious teenager,” she says. “There’s a place for the rebellious teenager in the city, and I would like to see Deep Ellum stay that way.”
