The district represents a cross-section of Dallas commercial architecture from the 1880s to the 1950s.

[2] At the turn of the twentieth century, Harwood Street carried merchants and bankers from their mansions in The Cedars to their offices downtown and back home again at night.

In the 1920s it was scene shop row, home to the city's vaudeville suppliers.

Most of the area became part of the larger Dallas Downtown Historic District in 2009.

The following structures are considered contributing properties of the Harwood Historic District and were constructed over a period of six decades.