Mardi Gras Parade in Dallas — ca. 1876/1877
by Paula Bosse
Main St. looking east from Austin (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
What was happening downtown on this day, about 140 years ago? Mardi Gras, Dallas-style! Let’s wander around this parade photo, taken by Alfred Freeman. (Click photos to see larger images.)
This kid has a great, unobstructed second-story view of the parade below.
No glitz, no beads, no flashing.
Every time I look at the original photograph, my eye always goes to this woman.
Okay, that kid’s view is nothing compared to these guys who’ve scaled the Dallas Herald building.
In information about the 1876 parade, the Feb. 24, 1876 edition of The Dallas Herald advised: “To prevent accidents, owners of buildings having varandas [sic] will permit no one to stand on them, unless the same have been sufficiently strengthened.” I don’t know … some of those “varandas” look pretty shaky.
And down Main Street they go.
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This is a stereograph photo by Alfred Freeman, from the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs Collection, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; it can be viewed here. (I have manipulated the color.) SMU has the photo as being “ca. 1870,” but the first Mardi Gras parade in Dallas wasn’t held until 1876. The view shows Main Street looking east, apparently taken from the roof of the Reed & Lathrop building on the northeast corner of Main and Austin.
UPDATE: This might be a photograph of the Mardi Gras celebration held in Dallas on February 24 (a Thursday…), in 1876. This was the first such celebration held in the city, and it was a massive undertaking, attracting more than 20,000 spectators. For weeks after the event, Alfred Freeman was advertising his Mardi Gras photographs with the following text: “Freeman, the artist, has nine different views of the Mardi Gras procession, for sale.”
Read about the first Mardi Gras parade in Dallas in the Flashback Dallas post “Mardi Gras: ‘Our First Attempt at a Carnival Fete’ — 1897,” here.
Click pictures for larger images.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
Freeman was a very prolific photographer. Working in Dallas from 1870 until about 1890 then in Denison/Sherman finally up in Colorado Springs where he passed away in the early 1930s.
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I like the product-placement for his business he’s got there with that sign hanging from a rope over the parade action!
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[…] I wrote a previous post called “Mardi Gras Parade in Dallas — ca. 1876″ which features a photograph which I think is probably from this first Mardi Gras. That post and photo can be seen here. […]
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[…] and who also sold his photographs of special events (such as this one of a 4th of July parade and this one of a Mardi Gras parade in Dallas) — he no doubt sold reproductions of his eclipse photos taken on July 29th. […]
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