Plano
— a town the railway grew, and the freeways found later.
Not only on a wall.
“Downtown Plano holds onto its 1880s grid: brick storefronts along 15th Street, the Interurban Railway depot at the corner of K Avenue, Haggard Park's bandshell across the way. East of the old town, Oak Point Park's prairie holds eight hundred acres of trail beside Rowlett Creek. The newer Plano climbs the rise to the west: Legacy West, the Toyota campus, the Dallas North Tollway. Both Planos live in the same zip code.
Plano, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Plano sits in Collin County on the Blackland Prairie about twenty miles north of downtown Dallas. The city was incorporated in 1873 along the Houston and Texas Central Railroad and grew on cotton and dairy before becoming one of the fastest-growing American suburbs in the 1980s. The 2020 census recorded a population of just over 285,000, the ninth-largest in Texas. Toyota Motor North America moved its headquarters here in 2017, anchoring the Legacy West development along the Dallas North Tollway and bringing roughly four thousand employees to the western edge of the city.
The Plano Balloon Festival has lifted hot-air balloons from Oak Point Park each September since 1980, drawing crowds across the third weekend of the month. In April the city's downtown arts district fills for ArtFest Plano, set around Haggard Park and the 1908 Interurban Railway depot. The Heritage Farmstead Museum, on the 1891 Ammie Wilson farmstead at the south end of 15th Street, runs school programs through most of the year and stages an 1890s harvest reenactment each October.
Downtown Plano sits along 15th Street between Avenue K and Avenue J, walkable from the DART Red Line's Downtown Plano Station. Most galleries, restaurants, and the courtyard theatre keep evening hours Thursday through Sunday. The Heritage Farmstead Museum, two blocks south, is open Thursday through Sunday from ten to four-thirty and offers free first-Saturday admission. Oak Point Park's twenty-six miles of trail are open from sunrise to sunset; the Recreation Center on Spring Creek Parkway has paid parking on event weekends only.