The building at 211 S. Akard Street used to be a telecommunications call center for AT&T. The name The Exchange Hall is a nod to that history — the old phone exchange boards that once ran through the building. What runs through it now is considerably more interesting.
The Exchange Hall opened in June 2021 as downtown Dallas’s first food hall, and it took a few years for the vendor lineup to settle into something worth making a special trip for. It’s there now. The space is 26,700 square feet of industrial-warm design — walnut staircase, bronze metal accents, garage-style doors that open onto the AT&T Discovery District plaza when the weather allows. A 104-foot media wall outside runs a light show Thursday through Saturday at 9:30pm. It’s a proper destination, not a lunch break afterthought.
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