Design District

The Design District & DFW's Music Scene

The Design District's anchor venue is Longhorn Ballroom, and the only thing the neighborhood disagrees about is whether Longhorn actually counts as Design District or somewhere between there and Bishop Arts — which tells you everything you need to know about Dallas. A Dallas landmark with its own museum in the building, a wood dance floor that Elvis and the Sex Pistols and Stevie Ray Vaughan all played on, and a 2024 renovation that kept the bones and fixed the bathrooms. Country on a Tuesday, a metal act on a Friday, both sold out, both feeling like the right call. Get there early, eat at the café, walk the museum, watch the sunset through the old lobby windows. Don't bring a nice car — you're parking on gravel.

More recently, the Design District has attracted creative entrepreneurs converting its warehouse spaces into evening venues, bars, and restaurants. The area's industrial character — high ceilings, concrete floors, exposed ductwork — lends itself naturally to creative adaptive reuse, and several of Dallas's most interesting restaurant openings of recent years have happened in Design District warehouses.

The Echo Lounge & Music Hall at 1701 S. Lamar St is the Design District's other key live music venue — a proper stage and mixing board in a converted warehouse that books regional and national acts across rock, country, and indie. It's the kind of room where you catch a band before they sell out the bigger rooms, with acoustics that punch well above its capacity. The crowd is there for the music, not just the bar.

The proximity to Deep Ellum (one mile east) and the Cedars arts neighborhood means the Design District sits at the intersection of three creative corridors — making it a natural gathering point for DFW's arts and music community. Events at Longhorn Ballroom regularly draw crowds that fill nearby parking lots and spill into neighboring blocks, giving the area an energy that few other Dallas neighborhoods can match on concert nights.